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» DEC 30 1049 

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by NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 


Introduction by WILLIAM LYON PHELP& 


THE 
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PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 


Mucu to the author’s surprise, and (if he may Say 
so without additional offence) considerably to his 
amusement, he finds that his sketch of official life, in- 
troductory to THe Scartet Lerrer, has created an 
unprecedented excitement in the respectable community 
immediately around him. It could hardly have been 
more violent, indeed, had he burned down the Custom 
House, and quenched its last smoking ember in the 
blood of a certain venerable personage, against whom 
he is supposed to cherish a peculiar malevolence. As 
the public disapprobation would weigh very heavily on 
him, were he conscious of deserving it, the author begs 
leave to say that he has carefully read over the intro- 
ductory pages, with a purpose to alter or expunge what- 
ever might be found amiss, and to make the best repara- 
tion in his power for the atrocities of which he has been 
adjudged cuilty. But it appears to him, that the only 
remarkable features of the sketch are its frank and 
genuine good-humor, and the general accuracy with 
which he has conveyed his sincere impressions of the 
characters therein described. As to enmity, or ill-feel- 
ing of any kind, personal or political, he utterly dis- 
claims such motives. The sketch might, perhaps, have 
been wholly omitted, without loss to the public, or detri- 


ment to the book; but, having undertaken to write it, 
v 


vi PREFACE [O THE SECOND EDITION 


he conceives that it could not have been done in a bet- 
ter or a kindlier spirit, nor, so far as his abilities availed, 
with a livelier effect of truth. 

The author is constrained, therefore, to republish his 
introductory sketch without the change of a word. 


Satem. March 30, 1850. 


¢ 


CONTENTS 


PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
INTRODUCTION 
THE Custom-House. Be neecancrory 


CHAPTER 


i 
ig 
Ly 
LV 
Ve 
VI. : 
PE eld aunts! Wee f 
. THE Extr-CHILD AND THE Minceae 


THE Prison-Door 

THE MarKET-PLACE 
THE RECOGNITION 

Tue INTERVIEW 
HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 
PEARL 


THe LEECH ? : 
‘Dre IcRECH AND) Eis Biren 


. THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 

. THE MINISTER’S VIGIL 

. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 

. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 


HESTER AND PEARL . 


. A Forest WALK 

. THE PASTOR AND HIS Pnonan 
. A FLoop oF SUNSHINE 

. THE CHILD AT THE BrooxK-SIpE 


Tue MINISTER IN A MAzeE 


. Tue NEw ENGLAND Ho.LipAy 

. THE PROCESSION 

. THE REVELATION OF THE Seas ears 
. CONCLUSION . 


1 va 
./ 


if OM pea we 





INTRODUCTION 


HAWTHORNE is the most consummate literary artist 
in American literature, and The Scarlet Letter is the 
greatest book ever written in the Western Hemisphere. 
It is not relatively, but absolutely great; it holds its 
place among the fifteen best novels of the world. As 
so much American literature is both second-rate and 
second-hand, rising above mediocrity when most imi- 
tative, and shaggy with crudity when most original, 
it is well to remember that in The Scarlet Letter we 
have a work of art profoundly original in conception 
and design, profound in its revelation and interpre- 
tation of human nature, accurate in its historical set- 
ting and written in a style almost impeccable. 

Hawthorne was, as Hutton called him, “The ghost 
of New England”; he came of a long line of Puritan 
ancestors, he was born at Salem in 1804, he was grad- 
uated at Bowdoin College, spent twelve lonely years 
in one room learning to write, married exactly the 
right kind of wife, and had that shyness and uncon- 
querable reserve that sometimes accompany the artistic 
temperament. Politically and socially, he had a genius 
for the inopportune; he was born on the Fourth of 
July, he remained a Democrat when nearly all his 
intimate friends were Abolitionists, and when Emer- 
son declared that John Brown had made the gallows as 
memorable as the Cross, Hawthorne remarked, “No 


man was ever more justly hanged.” 
ix 


x INTRODUCTION 


Upon his New England and Puritan foundation, 
he superimposed seven years’ residence in Europe, and 
died in 1864. 

When he lost his position in the Custom House 
at Salem, he came home in despondency, and told his 
wife that his occupation was gone. To his surprise, 
she greeted this information with delight, and said, 
“Now you can write your book.” “And what shall 
we live on while I am writing it?’ Her reply was 
to exhibit a little hoard of money which she had saved 
from the meagre weekly wage he-had given her for 
household expenses. She told him she had always 
known he was a genius, and that the time would come 
when it would be necessary for him to have leisure. 

In a year he wrote The Scarlet Letter (1850). Its 
greatness was instantly recognised; he found himselt 
famous. In 1851 the German translation appeared, 
and in 1853 the French. It has been translated into 
all the leading languages of the world, has been drama- 
tised, made into a grand opera, and lately received the 
dubious honour of the screen. 

Hawthorne is original in his background; it is a 
background of sombre greys and browns, on which his 
brilliant figures stand out in sharp relief. There is 
a shadowy region which he has made entirely his own. 
It is not the ghoul-haunted region of Weir, for there 
is little in common between Poe and Hawthorne, 
however inevitable the comparison. The difference 
is that between the physical and the spiritual; Poe is 
uncanny, high-pitched, sensatfonal; Hawthorne is sub- 
dued and subtle. To read him is to experience a change 
in the atmosphere rather than a change in the scenery. 

His world of shadows is quite terrestrial; we do not 


INTRODUCTION xi 


really leave the earth. Over his creations hangs a thin 
veil of fantasy, poetry, romance, and we see his char- 
acters through this transparent, gossamer, silver-grey 
mist, analogous to the light covering the pictures of 
Andrea del Sarto. This atmosphere is never ‘‘worked- 
up,’ nor can it possibly be detached from the story, 
any more than the air can be lifted off the grass. 

Hawthorne is an ideal realist. He is not a romances 
writer, like Cooper; he is not primarily interested in 
happenings and adventures. Yet he is by no means 
a realist like Zola, nor for that matter like George 
Eliot; perhaps Turgenev more nearly resembles him 
than any other writer. It is realism seen through a 
poetic medium. 

The Introduction on the Custom House—which 
building was unfortunately burned in 1921—was writ- 
ten I suppose mainly to relieve his own mind. Here 
his ironical humour found a subject made to his hand. 
Little did the bench-warmers who decorated his office 
suspect that the shy man was shrewdly judging them, 
and storing them up for literary material. As so often 
happens, both parties in these casual conversations 
regarded the other with secret contempt. Hawthorne’s 
advantage was in having an outlet. 

Apart from the intense human interest of the narra- 
tive, The Scarlet Letter expresses the sombre side of 
Puritan life. That was not the only side, for life even 
then went on its accustomed course. Young lovers 
kissed each other in the moonlight, as they have always 
done; and there must have been some frivolity, else why 
were stich measures taken to repress it? But the most 
striking, the most picturesque aspect of Puritan life, 
as we look back on it from laxer times, was its aus- 


xii INTRODUCTION 


terity. I suppose those who suffered the most were 
the children—for there was no place for them in the 
Puritan régime. \ Their mature masters would doubt- 
Jess have heartily approved of the following pedagogic 
recommendations, given out by a German moralist in 
the eighteenth century. 


Play must be forbidden in any and all of its forms. The 
children shall be instructed in this matter in such a way 
as to show them the wastefulness and folly of all play. 
They shall be led to see that play will distract their hearts 
and minds «from God and will work nothing but harm to 
their spiritual life. 


The times have changed. Now the entire family 
revolves around the nursery, where dwells the seat of 
authority, and the desires of the child are the law 
of the home. Probably the children are making the 
most of it, while the good weather lasts. 

The sombre background of Puritanism brings out 
the flame of The Scarlet Letter. The colours of the 
book are a notable part of its scheme. Sunshine and 
shadow alternate in the great scene by the brook, where 
for once the accursed letter leaves Hester’s bosom, 
youth and charm return to her face, only to fade when 
Pearl refastens the symbol. Pearl herself, the child 
of passion, flutters across the dark pages of the book, 
like a brilliant, exotic bird across a sullen sky. For, 
in that cold community, she is as exotic as a tropical 
visitor, coming as she does, from a country not only 
unvisited, but unmentionable, 

Private sin was followed by public shame. They 
wore their rue with a difference, but they wore it. In 


INTRODUCTION xiii 


the Colony Records of New Playmouth, dated June, 
1671, we find (see Alice Morse Earle, Curious Punish- 
ments of Bygone Days), that the detected ones were 
forced 


to wear two Capitall Letters, A.D., cut in cloth and sewed 
on their uppermost garment on the Arm and Back; and 
in any time they shall be founde without the letters se 
worne while in this government they shall be forthwith 
taken and publickly whipt. 


Not only is this novel a study of Puritan life exter- 
nally—the spiritual foundation of the book is Puritan- 
ism. The consciousness of sin is the core of the 
tragedy. The four characters are linked indissolubly 
together by one caprice. A sin by many considered 
lightly; the source of vulgar jest since the dawn 
of history; the object of religious worship by some 
ancient Pagans and by some modern novelists, is here 
painted in the deepest grain; painted with its inevitable 
consequences. There are many who rebel fiercely 
against what they regard as the unfairness of the pun- 
ishment, for there are many who are trying to play the 
game of life without obeying the rules. 

Had the Puritan Jonathan Edwards written the book, 
instead of the cool artist Hawthorne, he could not have | 
depicted sin in more powerful language. Thus I could 
wish that Hawthorne had not added the final chapter, 
but had let the book close with the dying confession 
of the minister, and its echo from the crowd. 

George Woodberry says, 


It is a relentless tale; the characters are singularly free 
from self-pity, and accept their fate as righteous; they 


XIV INTRODUCTION 


never forgave themselves, they show no sign of having 
forgiven one another ; even God’s forgiveness is left under 
a shadow of futurity. .. . A book from which light and 
love are absent may hold us by its truth to what is dark 
in life; but, in the highest sense, it is a false book. 


I dislike to differ from such a critic, and from one 
who adds to his critical perception so sure a sense of 
moral values. But here he misses the point. To an- 
swer his main contention, regard Chillingworth, remem- 
bering that it was often Hawthorne’s way to show an 
idea negatively. Chillingworth is transformed from a. 
calm, benign scholar, with the impersonal expression 
of an investigator, into a fiend; hell has dominion over 
him, and his eyes glow with the glare of the pit. This 
degradation is brought about by the subtle poison of re- 
venge; because he cannot forgive, and be free. His 
face changes by the slow cancer of hate into something 
inhuman. 

Light and love are not absent from the book; over the 
scaffold there is a celestial glory. And the objection 
of Mr. Woodberry, that “the characters are singularly 
free from self-pity,’ is not this one of Hawthorne’s 
greatest triumphs? Think of the vast number of 
people to-day, in and out of novels, who insist on their 
“right to happiness,” no matter by what degradation 
it is attained, nor by what pain caused to others. 
Arthur and Hester were made of sterner stuff, as be- 
' came the age in which they lived, as became their sense 
of responsibility, as became their respect for each other’s 
soul. They were free from the insidious weakness of 
self-pity. 

Another leading idea in the book is the contrast be- 


INTRODUCTION xv 


tween the loss of public respect and the loss of private 
respect, self-respect. Hester suffers the worst possible 
punishment that may befall a woman—public ostracism. 
There are those who say they do not care what any- 
body thinks of them; granting that they are speaking 
truly, a difficult admission, how if such a one were 
shunned on the streets as if one had some disgusting 
and contagious disease? How if every public appear- 
ance meant the derisive hooting by small boys, the 
studious crossing to the other side by former acquaint- 
ances, enforced isolation worse than a prison cell? 
That is what Hester has to endure. But the worst 
has happened; she at all events has nothing to fear. 
She suffers more on the street than in the solitude of 
her own room. There she has peace. 

Compared with the minister, she is enviable. He is 
the public idol. What gall, what wormwood, it must 
be to him to hear his praises sung to his face, to be told 
by adoring parishioners of the good his sermons have 
wrought, to be saluted on thé street with all the marks 
of reverence—and to have the scarlet letter burning in 
his breast! How intolerable his solitude! 

Not only is the book a revelation of the powers in 
the air, but even the bodies of the chief actors express 
their souls. This has already been pointed out in the 
case of Chillingworth; consider the varied thoughts 
of Hester in her varied meetings with Arthur, and how 
her face changes with them; consider the minister, with 
his hand on his heart, his body wearing thin from the 
inner fire till it becomes almost transparent; consider 
the whimsical fancies of Pearl, and how they are re- 
flected in her eyes. Such presentations remind us of the 
words of Donne, speaking of the young girl: 





Xvi INTRODUCTION 


Her pure and eloquent blood 
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, 
That one might almost say, her body thought. 


It is instructive by contrast to compare Flaubert’s 
Madame Bovary with Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. 
Both men were equally deliberate artists. In Madame 
Bovary we have a picture of degeneration ending in 
despair. Life has no solution. In The Scarlet Letter, 
we have sin and its consequences, illumined at last by 
the light of heaven. Flaubert has nothing but scorn 
for his characters, whereas Hawthorne treats all of his 
people with dignity. He did not show the sympathy 
with his characters that we find in Dickens and Thack- 
eray, but he was deeply moved by their fate. 

There is another difference between these two 
masterpieces. Flaubert was interested in the sin itself, 
and is not sparing of details. Hawthorne is interested 
only in the mental consequences. Hence he purposely 
began his story after the crime, in order to concentrate 
wholly on the spiritual and mental results. It is falling 
action. 

The evolution of the story is flawless. The plot un- 
folds as naturally and with as little apparent effort as 
the petals of a flower. In this respect, Hawthorne is 
superior to Balzac; for in the works of the French giant 
we feel the expense of energy. Here we have a natural 
beginning, a natural development, with an inexpressibly 
affecting conclusion. The Scarlet Letter illustrates 
Hardy’s definition of a novel, that it should be a living 
organism. 

Witit1am Lyon PHELPs, 


New Haven, Conn., 
December, 1920. 


THE SCARLET LETTER 


THE CUSTOM HOUSE 
INTRODUCTORY TO “‘THE SCARLET LETTER” 


It is a little remarkable, that—though disinclined to 
talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, 
and to my personal friends—an autobiographical im- 
pulse should twice in my life have taken possession of 
me, in addressing the public. The first time was three 
or four years since, when I favored the reader—inex- 
cusably, and for no earthly reason, that either the in- 
dulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine— 
with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude 
of an Old Manse. And now—because, beyond my 
deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on 
the former occasion—TI again seize the public by the 
button, and talk of my three years’ experience in a 
Custom House. The example of the famous “P. P., 
Clerk of this Parish,” was never more faithfully fol- 
lowed. The truth seems to be, however, that, when he 
casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author ad- 
dresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, 
or never take it up, but the few who will understand 
him, better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. 
Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and in- 


dulge themselves in such confidential depths of revela-. 
R 


2 THES GARDE Tpke 


tion as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, 
to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as 1f 
the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, 
were certain to find out the divided segment of the 
writer’s own nature, and complete his circle of existence 
by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely 
_ decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak 
impersonally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utter- 
ance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true 
relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to 
imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though 
not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, 
a native reserve being thawed by this genial conscious- 
ness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around 
us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me 
behind its veil. To this extent, and within these limits, 
an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without 
violating either the reader’s rights or his own. 

It wiil be seen likewise, that this Custom House 
sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind always recog- 
nized in literature, as explaining how a large portion of 
the following pages came into my possession, and as 
offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative therein 
contained. This, in fact,—a desire to put myself in my 
true position as editor, or very little more, of the most 
prolix among the tales that make up my volume,—this, 
and no other is my true reason for assuming a personal 
reiation with the public. In accomplishing the main 
purpose, it has appeared allowable, by a few extra 
touches, to give a faint representation of a mode of life 
not heretofore described, together with some of the 
characters that move in it, among whom the author hap- 
pened to make one. 


INTRODUCTORY 3 


In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, 
half a century ago, in the days of old King Derby, was 
a bustling wharf,—but which is now burdened with de- 
cayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symp- 
toms of commercial life, except, perhaps, a bark or brig, 
half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides ; 
or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out 
her cargo of firewood,—at the head, | say, of this di- 
lapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and 
along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of 
buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a 
border of unthrifty grass,—here, with a view from its 
front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, _ 
and thence across the harbor, stands a spacious edifice 
of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during 
precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats 
or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; 
but with the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead 
of horizontally, and thus indicating that a civil, and not 
a military post of Uncle Sam’s government is here es- 
tablished. Its front is ornamented with a portico of 
half a dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, be- 
neath which a flight of wide granite steps descends to- 
wards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enor- 
mous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread 
wings, a. shield before her breast, and, if I recollect 
aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed 
arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of 
temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she ap- 
pears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the 
general truculencv of her attitude, to threaten mischief 
to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn 
all citizens, careful of their safety, against intruding on 


4 THES GARRET EEGBET: 


the premises which she overshadows with her wings 
Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are 
seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves 
under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I pre- 
sume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness 
of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tender- 
ness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later,— 
oftener soon than late,—is apt to fling off her nestlings, 
with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a 
rankling wound from her barbed arrows. 

The pavement round about the above-described edi- 
fice—which we may as well name at once as the Custom 
House of the port—has grass enough growing in its 
chinks to show that it has not, of late days, been worn 
by any multitudinous resort of business. In some 
months of the year, however, there often chances a 
forenoon when affairs move onward with a livelier 
tread. Such occasions might remind the elderly citizen 
of that period before the last war with England, when 
Salem was a port by itself; not scorned, as she is now, 
by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit 
her wharves to crumble to ruin, while their ventures go 
to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood 
of commerce at New York or Boston. On some such 
morning, when three or four vessels happen to have ar- 
rived at once,—usually from Africa or South America, 
—or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward, 
there is a sound of frequent feet, passing briskly up 
and down the granite steps. Here, before his own wife 
has greeted him, you may greet the sea-flushed ship- 
master, just in port, with his vessel’s papers under his 
arm, in a tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his 
owner, cheerful or sombre, gracious or in the sulks, ac-, 


INTRODUCTORY 5 


cordingly as his scheme of the now accomplished voy- 
age has been realized in merchandise that will readily 
be turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of 
incommodities, such as nobody will care to rid him of. 
Here, likewise,—the germ of the wrinkle-browed, griz- 
zly-bearded, care-worn merchant,—we have the smart 
young clerk, who gets the taste of traffic as a wolf-cub 
does of blood, and already sends adventures in his mas- 
ters ships, when he had better be sailing mimic-boats 
upon a mill-pond. Another figure in the scene is the 
outward-bound sailor in quest of a protection; or the 
recently arrived one, pale and feeble, seeking a passport 
to the hospital. Nor must we forget the captains of 
the rusty little schooners that bring firewood from the 
British provinces; a rough-looking set of tarpaulins, 
without the alertness of the Yankee aspect, but con- 
tributing an item of no slight importance to our decay- 
ing trade. 

Cluster all these individuals together, as they some- 
times were, with other miscellaneous ones to diversify 
the group, and, for the time being, it made the Custom 
House a stirring scene. More frequently, however, on 
ascending the steps, you would discern—in the entry, 
if it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms, 
if wintry or inclement weather—a row of venerable 
figures, sitting in old-fashioned chairs, which were 
tipped on their hind legs back against the wall. Often- 
times they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard 
talking together, in voices between speech and a snore, 
and with that lack of energy that distinguishes the oc- 
cupants of almshouses, and all other human beings who 
depend for subsistence on charity, on monopolized labor, 
or anything else, but their own independent exertions. 


6 THEM GARERT DE TET 


These old gentlemen—seated, like Matthew, at the re- 
ceipt of customs, but not very liable to be summoned 
thence, like him, for apostolic errands—were Custom 
House officers. 

Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front 
door, is a certain room or office, about fifteen feet 
square, and of a lofty height; with two of its arched 
windows commanding a view of the aforesaid dilapi- 
dated wharf, and the third looking across a narrow 
lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three 
give glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, 
slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers; around the doors of 
which are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, 
clusters of old salts, and such other wharf-rats as haunt 
the Wapping of a seaport. The room itself is cob- 
webbed, and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn 
with gray sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen 
into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from the 
general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary 
into which womankind, with her tocls of magic, the 
broom and mop, has very infrequent access. In the 
way of furniture, there is a stove with a voluminous 
funnel; an old pine desk, with a three-legged stool be- 
side it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly 
decrepit and infirm; and—not to forget the library— 
on some shelves, a score or two of volumes of the Acts 
of Congress, and a bulky Digest of the Revenue Laws. 
A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a 
medium of vocal communication with other parts of the 
edifice. And here, some six months ago,—pacing from 
corner to corner, or lounging on the long-legged stool, 
with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes wandering up 
and down the columns of the morning newspaper,— 


INTRODUCTORY 7 


you might have recognized, honored reader, the same 
individual who welcomed you into his cheery little 
study, where the sunshine glimmered so pleasantly 
through the willow branches, on the western side of the 
Old Manse. But now, should you go thither to seek 
him, you would inquire in vain for the Locofoco Sur- 
veyor. The besom of reform has swept him out of 
office; and a worthier successor wears his dignity, and 
pockets his emoluments. 

This old town of Salem—my native place, though I 
fave dwelt much away from it, both in boyhood and 
‘naturer years—possesses, or did possess, a hold on my 
affections, the force of which I have never realized, 
during my seasons of actual residence here. Indeed, so 
far as its physical aspect is concerned, with its flat, un- 
varied surface, covered chiefly with wooden houses, 
few or none of which pretend to architectural beauty,— 
its irregularity, which is neither picturesque nor quaint, 
but only tame,-—its long and lazy street lounging weari- 
somely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with 
Gallows Hill and New Guinea at one end, and a view 
of the almshouse at the other,—such being the features 
of my native town, it would be quite as reasonable to 
form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged 
checker-board. And yet, though invariably happiest 
elsewhere, there is within me a feeling for old Salem, 
which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be content to 
call affection. The sentiment is probably assignable to 
the deep and aged roots which my family has struck 
into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a 
quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant 
of my name, made his appearance in the wild and for- 
est-bordered settlement, which has since become a city. 


8 THE SCARLEDVLEER ERE 


And here his descendants have been born and died, and 
have mingled their earthly substance with the soil, until 
no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the 
mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, I walk the 
streets. In part, therefore, the attachment which I 
speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for 
dust. Few of my countrymen can know what it is; 
nor, as frequent transplantation is perhaps better for 
the stock, need they consider it desirable to know. 

But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. 
The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family 
tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present 
to my boyish imagination, as far back as I can remem- 
ber. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home- 
feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference 
to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a 
stronger claim to a residence here on account of this 
grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned pro- 
genitor,—who came so early, with his Bible, and his 
sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately 
port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and 
peace,—a stronger claim than for myself, whose name 
is seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a 
soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; 
he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He 
_ was likewise a bitter persecutor, as witness the Quakers, 
who have remembered him in their histories, and re- 
late an incident of his hard severity towards a woman 
of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, 
than any record of his better deeds, although these were 
many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and 
made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the 
witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left 


INTRODUCTORY 9 


a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his old 
dry bones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must 
still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust! 
I know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought. 
themselves to repent, and ask pardon of Heaven for 
their cruelties ; or whether they are now groaning under 
the heavy consequences of them, in another state of 
being. At all events, I, the present writer, as their rep- 
resentative, hereby take shame upon myself for their 
sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them—as | 
have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condi- 
tion of the race, for many a long year back, would 
argue to exist—may be now and henceforth retnoved. 

Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black- 
browed Puritans would have thought it quite a suffi- 
cient retribution for his sins, that, after so long a lapse 
of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much 
venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its top- 
most bough, an idler like myself. No aim, that I have 
ever cherished, would they recognize as laudable; no 
success of mine—if my life, beyond its domestic scope, 
had ever been brightened by success—-would they deem 
otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. 
“What is he?’ murmurs one gray shadow of my fore- 
fathers to the other. “A writer of story-books! What 
kind of a business in life-—what mode of glorifying 
God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and 
generation,—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow 
might as well have been a fiddler!” Such are the com- 
pliments bandied between my great-grandsires and my- 
self, across the gulf of time! And yet, let them scorn 
me as they will, strong traits of their nature have inter- 
twined themselves with mine. 


10 THE SCARLET ERLE R 


Planted deep, in the town’s earliest infancy and child- 
hood, by these two earnest and energetic men, the race 
has ever since subsisted here; always, too, in respecta- 
bility; never, so far as I have known, disgraced by a 
single unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the 
other hand, after the first two generations, performing 
any memorable deed, or so much as putting forward a 
claim to public notice. Gradually, they have sunk al- 
most out of sight; as old houses, here and there about 
the streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by the 
accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for 
above a hundred years, they followed the sea; a gray- 
headed shipmaster, in each generation, retiring from 
the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of four- 
teen took the hereditary place before the mast, con- 
fronting the salt spray and the gale, which had blus- 
tered against his sire and grandsire. The boy, also, in 
due time, passed from the forecastle to the cabin, spent 
a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his world- 
wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust 
with the natal earth. This long connection of a family 
with one spot, as its place of birth and burial, creates a 
kindred between the human being and the locality, quite 
independent of any charm in the scenery or moral cir- 
cumstances that surround him. It is not love, but in- 
stinct. The new inhabitant—who came himself from 
a foreign land, or whose father or grandfather came— 
has little claim to be called a Salemite; he has no con- 
ception of the oysterlike tenacity with which an old set- 
tler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to 
the spot where his successive generations have been 
imbedded. It is no matter that the place is joyless for 
him; that he is weary of the old wooden houses, the 


INTRODUCTORY If 


mud and dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the 
chill east wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres,— 
all these, and whatever faults besides he may see or 
imagine, are nothing to the purpose. The spell survives, 
and just as powerfully as if the natal spot were an 
earthly paradise. So has it been in my case. I felt it 
almost.as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the 
mould of features and cast of character which had all 
along been familiar here,—ever, as one representative 
of the race lay down in his grave, another assuming, 
as it were, his sentry-march along the main street,— 
might still in my little day be seen and recognized in 
the old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is an 
evidence that the connection, which has become an un- 
healthy one, should at last be severed. Human nature 
will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted 
and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in 
the same worn-out soil. My children have had other 
birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within 
my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed 
earth. 

On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this 
strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native | 
town, that brought me to fill a place in Uncle Sam’s 
brick edifice, when I might as well, or better, have gone 
somewhere else. My doom was on me. It was not the 
first time, nor the second, that I had gone away,—as it 
seemed, permanently,—but yet returned, like the bad 
half-penny; or as if Salem were for me the inevitable 
centre of the universe. So, one fine morning, I as- 
cended the flight of granite steps, with the President’s 
commission in my pocket, and was introduced to the 
corps of gentlemen who were to aid me in my weighty 


12 THES SCARLET ai hy RE. 


responsibility, as chief executive officer of the Custom 
House. 

I doubt greatly—or, rather, I do not doubt at all— 
whether any public functionary of the United States, 
either in the civil or military line, has ever had such a 
patriarchal body of veterans under his orders as myself. 
The whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was at once 
settled, when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty 
years before this epoch, the independent position of the 
Collector had kept the Salem Custom House out of the 
whirlpool of political vicissitude, which makes the tenure 
of office generally so fragile. A soldier—New Eng- 
land’s most distinguished soldier,—he stood firmly on 
the pedestal of his gallant services; and, himself secure 
in the wise liberality of the successive administrations 
through which he had held office, he had been the 
safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger 
and heartquake. General Miller was radically conserva- 
tive; a man over whose kindly nature habit had no slight 
Influence; attaching himself strongly to familiar faces, 
and with difficulty moved to change, even when change 
might have brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, 
on taking charge of my department, I found few but 
aged men. They were ancient sea-captains, for the 
most part, who, after being tost on every sea, and 
standing up sturdily against life’s tempestuous blast, 
had finally drifted into this quiet nook; where, with 
little to disturb them, except the periodical terrors of 
a presidential election, they one and all acauired a new 
lease of existence. Though by no means less liable 
than their fellow-men to age and infirmity, they had 
evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bav. 
Two or three of their number, as I was assured, being 


INTRODUCTORY. 13 


gouty and rheumatic, or perhaps bedridden, never 
dreamed of making their appearance at the Custom 
House during a large part of the year; but, after a 
torpid winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine 
of May or June, go lazily about what they termed duty, 
and, at their own leisure and convenience, betake them- ~ 
selves to bed again. I must plead guilty to the charge 
of abbreviating the official breath of more than one 
of these venerable servants of the republic. They were 
allowed, on my representation, to rest from their arduous 
labors, and soon afterwards—as if their sole principle 
of life had been zeal for their country’s service, as I 
verily believe it was—withdrew to a better world. It 
is a pious consolation to me, that, through my inter- 
ference, a sufficient space was allowed them for re- 
pentance of the evil and corrupt practices into which, 
as a matter of course, every Custom House officer 
must be supposed to fall. Neither the front nor the 
back entrance of the Custom House opens on the road 
to Paradise. 

The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was 
well for their venerable brotherhood that the new Sur- 
veyor was not a politician, and though a faithful Demo- 
crat in principle, neither received nor held his office 
with any reference to political services. Had it: been 
otherwise,—had an active politician been put into this 
influential. post, to assume the easy task of making 
head against a Whig Collector, whose infirmities with- 
held him from the personal administration of his office, 
—hardly a man of the old corps would have drawn 
the breath of official life, within a month after the 
exterminating angel had come up the Custom House 
steps. According to the received code in such matters. 


14 PHEVSGARCEVSE LU EE Ts: 


it would have been nothing short of duty, in a politician, 
to bring every one of those white heads under the axe 
of the guillotine. It was plain enough to discern that 
the old fellows dreaded some such discourtesy at my 
hands. It pained, and at the same time amused me, to 
behold the terrors that attended my advent; to see a 
furrowed cheek, weather-beaten by half a century of 
storm, turn ashy pale at the glance of so harmless an 
individual as myself; to detect, as one or another ad- 
dressed me, the tremor of a voice, which, in long-past 
days, had been wont to bellow through a speaking- 
trumpet hoarsely enough to frighten Boreas himself to 
silence. They knew, these excellent old persons, that, 
by all established rule,—and, as regarded some of them, 
weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business,— 
they ought to have given place to younger men, more 
orthodox in politics, and altogether fitter than them- 
selves to serve our common Uncle. I knew it too, but 
could never quite find in my heart to act upon the 
knowledge. Much and deservedly to my own discredit, 
therefore, and considerably to the detriment of my 
official conscience, they continued, during my incum- 
bency, {o creep about the wharves, and loiter up and 
down the Custom House steps. They spent a good deal 
of time, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with 
their chairs tilted back against the wall; awaking, how- 
ever, once or twice in a forenoon, to bore one another 
with the several thousandth repetition of old sea-stories, 
and mouldy jokes, that had grown to be passwords and 
countersigns among them. 

The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the 
aew Surveyor had no great harm in him. So, with 
lightsome hearts, and the happy consciousness of being 








INTRODUCTORY 15 


usefully employed,—in their own behalf, at least, if 
not for our beloved country,—these good old gentle- 
men went through the various formalities of office. 
Sagaciously, under their spectacles, did they peep into 
the holds of vessels! Mighty was their fuss about lit- 
tle matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness 
that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers! 
Whenever such a mischance occurred,—when a wagon- 
load of valuable merchandise had been smuggled 
ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their 
unsuspicious noses,—nothing could exceed the vigi- 
lance and alacrity with which they proceeded to lock, 
and double-lock, and secure with tape and sealing-wax, 
all the avenues of the delinquent vessel. Instead of 
a reprimand for their previous negligence, the case 
seemed rather to require an eulogium on their praise- 
worthy caution, after the mischief had happened; a 
grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal, 
the moment that there was no longer any remedy. 
Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, 
it is my foolish habit to contract a kindness for them. 
The better part of my companion’s character, if it have 
a better part, is that which usually comes uppermost 
in my regard, and forms the type whereby I recognize 
the man. As most of these old Custom House officers 
had good traits, arid as my position in reference to 
them, being paternal and protective, was favorable to 
the growth of friendly sentiments, I soon grew to like 
them all. It was pleasant, in the summer forenoons, 
—when the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest 
of the human family, merely communicated a genial 
warmth to their half-torpid systems,—it was pleasant 
to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of them 


16 TH FSS Ga RICE Teel ey reals 


all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozey 
witticisms of past generations were thawed out, and 
came bubbling with laughter from their lips. Exter- 
nally, the jollity of aged men has much in common 
with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more 
than a deep sense of humor, has little to do with the 
matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the. 
surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike 
to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. In 
one case, however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it 
more resembles the phosphorescent glow of decaying 
wood. 

It would be sad injustice, the reader must under- 
stand, to represent all my excellent old friends as in 
their dotage. In the first place, my coadjutors were 
not invariably old; there were men among them in 
their strength and prime, of marked ability and en- 
ergy, and altogether superior to the sluggish and de- 
pendent mode of life on which their evil stars had cast 
them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were 
sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual 
tenement in good repair. But, as respects the ma- 
jority of my corps of veterans, there will be no wrong 
done, if I characterize them generally.as a) set of 
wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth 
preservation from their varied experience of life. They 
seemed to have flung, away all the golden grain of 
practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many 
opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have 
stored their memories with the husks. They spoke 
with far more interest and unction of their morning’s 
breakfast, or yesterday’s, to-day’s or to-morrow’s din- 
ner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, 


INTRODUCTORY 17 


and all the world’s wonders which they had witnessed 
with their youthful eyes. 

The father of the Custom House—the patriarch, 
not only of this little squad of officials, but, I am bold 
to say, of the respectable body of tide-waiters all over 
the United States—was a certain permanent Inspec- 
tor. He might truly be termed a legitimate son of 
the revenue system, dyed in the wool, or, rather, born 
in the purple; since his sire, a Revolutionary colonel, 
and formerly collector of the port, had created an 
office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period 
of the early ages which few living men can now re- 
member. This Inspector, when I first knew him, was 
a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and cer- 
tainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter- 
green that you would be likely to discover in a life- 
time’s search. With his florid cheek, his compact 
figure, smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, 
his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty 
aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed— 
but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in 
the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no 
business to touch. His voice and laugh, which per- 
petually reéchoed through the Custom House, had 
nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old 
man’s utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, 
like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion. 
Looking at him merely as an animal,—and there was, 
very little else to look at,—he was a most satisfactory 
object, from the thorough healthfulness and whole: 
someness of his system, and his capacity, at that ex« 
treme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the delights 
which he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The 


18 LHEOS CARL PRU RIghirs 


careless security of his life in the Custom House, on a 
regular income, and with but slight and infrequent ap- 
prehensions of removal, had no doubt contributed to . 
make time pass lightly over him. The original and 
more potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection 
of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of in- 
tellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and 
spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, 
being in barely enough measure to keep the old gen- 
tleman from walking on all-fours. He possessed no 
power of thought, no depth of feeling, no troublesome 
sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a few common- 
place instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper 
that grew inevitably out of his physical well-being, 
did duty very respectably, and to general acceptance, 
in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband of three 
wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty chil- 
dren, most of whom, at every age of childhood or 
maturity, had likewise returned to dust. Here, one 
would suppose, might have been sorrow enough to 
imbue the sunniest disposition, through and through, 
with a sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector! 
One brief sigh sufficed to carry off the entire burden 
of these dismal reminiscences. The next moment, he 
was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant; far 
readier than the Collector’s junior clerk, who, at nine- 
teen years, was much the elder and graver man of the 
two. 

I used to watch and study this patriarchal person- 
age with, I think, livelier curiosity, than any other 
form of humanity there presented to my notice. He 
was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in one 
point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable, 


INTRODUCTORY 19 


such an absolute nonentity, in every other. My con- 
clusion was that he had no soul, no heart, no mind; 
nothing, as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, 
withal, so cunningly had the few materials of his char 
acter been put together, that there was no painful per- 
ception of deficiency, but, on my part, an entire con- 
tentment with what I found in him. It might be 
difficult—and it was so—-to conceive how he should 
exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; 
but surely his existence here, admitting that it was to 
terminate with his last breath, had been not unkindly 
given; with no higher moral responsibilities than the 
beasts of the field, but with a larger scope of enjoy- 
ment than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity 
from the dreariness and duskiness of age. 

One point, in which he had vastly the advantage 
over his four-footed brethren, was his ability to recol- 
lect the good dinners which it had made no small por- 
tion of the happiness of his life to eat. His gour- 
mandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear 
him talk of roast meat was as appetizing as a pickle 
or an oyster. As he possessed no higher attribute, 
and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any spiritual en- 
dowment by devoting all his energies and ingenuities 
to subserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always 
pleased and satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, 
poultry, and butcher’s meat, and the most eligible 
methods of preparing them for the table. His remi- 
niscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of 
the actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig of 
turkey under one’s very nostrils. There were flavors 
on his palate, that had lingered there not less than 


20 TEES OAC ile Terre 


sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently as 
fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had just de- 
voured for his breakfast. I have heard him smack 
his lips over dinners, every guest at which, except 
himself, had long been food for worms. It was mar- 
vellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals 
were continually rising up before him; not in anger 
or retribution, but as if grateful for his former appre- 
ciation and seeking to reduplicate an endless series of 
enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual. A tender- 
loin of beef, a hindquarter of veal, a sparerib of pork, 
a particular chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy 
turkey, which had perhaps adorned his board in the 
days of the elder Adams, would be remembered; 
while all the subsequent experience of our race, and 
all the events that brightened or darkened his indi- 
vidual career, had gone over him with as little perma- 
nent effect as the passing breeze. The chief tragic 
event of the old man’s life, so far as I could judge, 
was his mishap with a certain goose which lived and 
died some twenty or forty years ago; a goose of most 
promising figure, but which, at table, proved so invet- 
erately tough that the carving-knife would make no 
impression on its carcass, and it could only be divided 
with.an axe and handsaw.. 

But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, how- 
ever, I should be glad to dwell at considerably more 
length, because of all men whom I have ever known, 
this individual was fittest to be a Custom House officer. 
Most persons, owing to causes which I may not have 
space to hint at, suffer moral detriment from this pe- 
culiar mode of life. The old Inspector was incapable 
of it, and, were he to continue in office to the end of 


IND RODUOCTORY 21 


time, would be just as good as he was then, and sit 
down to dinner with just as good an appetite. 

There is one likeness, without which my gallery of 
Custom House portraits would be strangely incomplete; 
but which my comparatively few opportunities for 
observation enable me to sketch only in the merest 
outline. It is that of the Collector, our gallant old 
General, who, after his brilliant military service, sub- 
sequently to which he had ruled over a wild Western 
territory, had come hither, twenty years before, to 
spend the decline of his varied and honorable life. 
The brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or 
quite, his threescore years and ten, and was pursuing 
the remainder of his earthly march, burdened with in- 
firmities which even the martial music of his own spirit- 
stirring recollections could do little towards lightening. 
The step was palsied now that had been foremost in 
the charge. It was only with the assistance of a servant, 
and by leaning his hand heavily on the iron balustrade, 
that he could slowly and painfully ascend the Custom 
House steps, and, with a toilsome progress across the 
floor, attain his customary chair beside the fireplace. 
There he used to sit, gazing with a somewhat dim se- 
renity of aspect at the figures that came and went; 
amid the rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, 
the discussion of business, and the casual talk of the 
office; all which sounds and circumstances seemed but 
indistinctly to impress his senses, and hardly to make 
their way into his inner sphere of contemplation. His 
countenance, in this repose, was mild and kindly. If 
kis notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and 
interest gleamed out upon his features; proving that - 
there was light within him, and that it was only the. 


22 THEVSGARE ETM ILE TS 


outward medium of the intellectual lamp that ob- 
structed the rays in their passage. The closer you 
penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder 
it appeared. When no longer called upon to speak, 
or listen, either of which operations cost him an evi- 
dent effort, his face would briefly subside into its for- 
‘mer not uncheerful quietude. It was not painful to 
behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the im- 
becility of decaying age. The framework of his na- 
ture, originally strong and massive, was not yet crum- 
bled into ruin. 

To observe and define his character, however, under 
such disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace 
out and build up anew, in imagination, an old fortress, 
like Ticonderoga, from a view of its gray and broken 
ruins. Here and there, perchance, the walls may re- 
main almost complete, but elsewhere may be only a 
shapeless mound, cumbrous with its very strength, and 
overgrown, through long years of peace and neglect, 
with grass and alien weeds. 

Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affec- 
tion,—for, slight as was the communication between 
us, my feeling towards him, like that of all bipeds and 
quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly be 
termed so,—I could discern the main points of his 
portrait. It was marked with the noble and heroic 
qualities which showed it to be not by a mere accident, 
but of good right, that he had won a distinguished 
name. His spirit could never, I conceive, have been 
characterized by an uneasy activity; it must, at any 
period of his life, have required an impulse to set him 
in motion; but, once stirred up, with obstacles to over- 
come, and an adequate object to be attained, it was 


INTRODUCTORY 23 


not in the man to give out or fail. The heat that had 
tormerly pervaded his nature, and which was not yet 
extinct, was never of the kind that flashes and flickers 
in a blaze; but, rather, a deep, red glow, as of iron in 
a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness; this was the 
expression of his repose, even in such decay as had 
crept untimely over him, at the period of which |] 
speak. But I could imagine, even then, that under 
some excitement which should go deeply into his con- 
sciousness,—roused by a trumpet-peal loud enough to 
awaken all his energies that were not dead, but only 
slumbering,—he was yet capable of flinging off his 
infirmities like a sick man’s gown, dropping the staff 
of age to seize a battle-sword, and starting up once 
more a warrior. And, in so intense a moment, his 
demeanor would have still been calm. Such an ex- 
hibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not 
to be anticipated, nor desired. What I saw in him— 
as evidently as the indestructible ramparts of Old 
Ticonderoga already cited as the most appropriate 
simile—were the features of stubborn and ponderous 
endurance, which might well have amounted to ob- 
stinacy in his earlier days; of integrity, that, like 
most of his other endowments, lay in a somewhat 
heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable and unman- 
ageable as a ton of iron ore; and of benevolence, 
which, fiercely as he led the bayonets on at Chippewa 
or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine a stamp 
as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthro- 
pists of the age. He had slain men with his own 
hand for aught I know,—certainly they had fallen, 
like blades of grass at the sweep of the scythe, before 
the charge to which his spirit imparted its triumphant 


24 THE SCARLET LETTER 


energy; but, be that as it might, there was never in 
his heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the 
down off a butterfly’s wing. I have not known the 
man, to whose innate kindliness I would more confi- 
dently make an appeal. 

Many characteristics—and those, too, which con- 
tribute not the least forcibly to impart resemblance in 
a sketch—must have vanished, or been obscured, be- 
fore I met the General. All merely graceful attri- 
butes are usually the most evanescent; nor does Na- 
ture adorn the human ruin with blossoms of new 
beauty that have their roots and proper nutriment only 
in the chinks and crevices of decay, as she sows wall- 
flowers over the ruined fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, 
even in respect of grace and beauty, there were points 
well worth noting. A ray of humor, now and then, 
would make its way through the veil of dim obstruc- 
tion, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait 
of native elegance, seldom seen in the masculine char- 
acter after childhood or early youth, was shown in the 
General’s fondness for the sight and fragrance of 
flowers. An old soldier might be supposed to prize 
only the bloody laurel on his brow; but here was one 
who seemed to'have a young girl’s appreciation of the 
floral tribe. . 

There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General — 
used to sit; while the Surveyor—though seldom, when 
it could be avoided, taking upon himself the difficult 
task of engaging him in conversation—was fond of 
standing at a distance, and watching his quiet and 
almost slumberous countenance. He seemed away 
from us, although we saw him but a few yards off; 
remote, though we passed close beside his chair; un- 


INTRODUCTORY 25 


attainable, though we might have stretched forth our 
hands and touched his own. It might be that he lived 
a more real life within his thoughts than amid the un- 
appropriate environment of the Collector’s office. The 
evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the battle; the 
_ flourish of old, heroic music, heard thirty years before, 
—such scenes and sounds, perhaps, were all alive be- 
fore his intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants 
and shipmasters, the spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, 
entered and departed; the bustle of this commercial 
and Custom House life kept up its little murmur round 
about him; and neither with the men nor their af- 
fairs did the General appear to sustain the most dis- 
tant relation. He was as much out of place as an old 
sword—now rusty, but which had flashed once in the 
battle’s front, and showed still a bright gleam along 
its blade—would have been, among the inkstands, 
paper-folders, and mahogany rulers, on the Deputy 
Collector’s desk. 

There was one thing that much aided me in renew- 
ing and re-creating the stalwart soldier of the Niagara 
frontier.—the man of true and simple energy. It 
was the recollection of those memorable words of his, 
—T’ll try, Sir!’’—spoken on the very verge of a des- 
perate and heroic enterprise, and breathing the soul 
and spirit of New England hardihood, comprehending 
all perils, and encountering all. If, in our country, 
valor were rewarded by heraldic honor, this phrase— 
which it seems so easy to speak, but which only he, 
with such a task of danger and glory before him, has 
ever spoken—would be the best and fittest of all mottoes 
for the General’s shield of arms. , 

It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and 


26 Waihi Ove lie ase) SIRI sc 


intellectual health, to be brought into habits of com- 
panionship with individuals unlike himself, who care 
little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities 
he must go out_of himself to appreciate. The acci- 
dents of my life have often afforded me this advantage, 
but never with more fulness and variety than during 
my continuance in office. There was one man, espe- 
cially, the observation of whose character gave me a 
new idea of talent. His gifts were emphatically those 
of aman of business; prompt, acute, clear-minded; with 
an eye that saw through all perplexities, and a faculty 
of arrangement that made them vanish, as by the wav- 
ing of an enchanter’s wand. Bred up from boyhood 
in the Custom House, it was his proper field of activ- 
ity; and the many intricacies of business, so harassing 
to the interloper, presented themselves before him with 
the regularity of a perfectly comprehended system. In 
my contemplation, he stood as the ideal of his class. 
He was, indeed, the Custom House in himself, or, at 
all events, the mainspring that kept its variously re- 
volving wheels in motion; for, in an institution like 
this, where its officers are appointed to subserve their 
own profit and convenience, and seldom with a lead- 
ing reference to their fitness for the duty to be per- 
formed, they must perforce seek elsewhere the dex- 
terity which is not in them. Thus, by an inevitable 
necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-filings, so did our 
man of business draw to himself the difficulties which 
everybody met with. With an easy condescension, and 
kind forbearance towards our stupidity,—which, to 
his order of mind, must have seemed little short of 
crime,—would he forthwith, by the merest touch of 
his finger, make the incomprehensible as clear as day- 


INTRODUCTORY 27 


light. The merchants valued him not less than we, 
his esoteric friends. His integrity was perfect: it was 
a law of nature with him, rather than a choice or a 
principle; nor can it be otherwise than the main con- 
dition of an intellect so remarkably clear and accurate 
as his, to be honest and regular in the administration 
of affairs. A stain on his conscience, as to anything 
that came within the range of his vocation, would 
trouble such a man very much in the same way, though 
to a far greater degree, than an error in the balance 
of an account, or an ink-blot on the fair page of a book 
of record. Here, in a word,—and it is a rare instance 
in my life,—-I had met with a person thoroughly adapted 
to the situation which he held. 

Such were some of the people with whom I now 
found myself connected. I took it in good part, at the 
hands of Providence, that I was thrown into a position 
so little akin to my past habits, and set myself sert- 
ously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. 
After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes 
with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; after liv- 
ing for three years within the subtile influence of an 
intellect like Emerson’s; after those wild, free days 
on the Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, be- 
side our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; 
after talking with Thoreau about pine-trees and Indian 
relics, in his hermitage at Walden; after growing fas- 
tidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of 
Hillard’s culture; after becoming imbued with poetic 
sentiment at Longfellow’s hearth-stone,—it was time, 
at length, that I should exercise other faculties of my 
nature, and nourish myself with food for which I had 
hitherto had little appetite. Even the old Inspector 


28 THES GARE ET: Hai ky 


was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had 
known Alcott. I look upon it as an evidence, in some 
measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lack- 
ing no essential part of a thorough organization, that, 
‘with such associates to remember, I could mingle at 
once with men of altogether different qualities, and 
never murmur at the change. 

Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of 
little moment in my regard. I cared not, at this period, 
for books; they were apart from me. Nature,—except 
it were human nature,—the nature that is developed 
in earth and sky, was, in one sense, hidden from me; 
and all the imaginative delight, wherewith it had been 
spiritualized, passed away out of my mind. A gift, a 
faculty if it had not departed, was suspended and in- 
animate within me. There would have been something 
sad, unutterably dreary, in all this, had I not been 
conscious that it lay at my own option to recall what- 
ever was valuable in the past. It might be true, in- 
deed, that this was a life which could not with impu- 
nity be lived too long; else, it might have made me 
permanently other than I had been without transform- 
ing me into any shape which it would be worth my 
while to take. But I never considered it as other than 
a transitory life. There was always a prophetic in- 
stinct, a low whisper in my ear, that, within no long 
period, and whenever a new change of custom should 
be essential to my good, a change would come. 

Meanwhile, there I was, a Surveyor of the Revenue, 
and, so far as I have been able to understand, as good 
a Surveyor as need be. A man of thought, fancy, and 
sensibility (had he ten times the Surveyor’s propor- 
tion of those qualities) may, at any time, be a man 


INTRODUCTORY 29 


of affairs, if he will only choose to give himself the 
trouble. My fellow-officers, and the merchants and 
sea-captains with whom my official duties brought me 
into any manner of connection, viewed me in no other 
light, and probably knew me in no other character. 
None of them, I presume, had ever read a page of my 
inditing, or would have cared a fig the more for me 
if they had read them all; nor would it have mended 
the matter, in the least, had those same unprofitable 
pages been written with a pen like that of Burns or of 
Chaucer, each of whom was a Custom House officer 
in his day, as well as I. It is a good lesson—though 
it may often be a hard one—for a man who has 
dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself 
a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, 
to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his 
claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid 
of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, 
and all he aims at. I know not that I especially needed 
the lesson, either in the way of warning or rebuke; 
but, at any rate, I learned it thoroughly: nor, it gives 
me pleasure to reflect, did the truth, as it came home 
to my perception, ever cost me a pang, or require to be 
thrown off in a sigh. In the way of literary talk, it 
is true, the Naval Officer—an excellent fellow, who 
came into office with me and went out only a little 
later—would often engage me in a discussion about 
one or the other of his favorite topics, Napoleon or 
Shakespeare. The Collector’s junior clerk, too,—a 
young gentleman who, it was whispered, occasionally 
covered a sheet of Uncle Sam’s letter-paper with what 
(at the distance of a few yards) looked very much like 
poetry,—used now and then to speak to me of books, 


30 DES Ot eH yt ole ras 


as matters with which I might possibly be conversant. 
This was my all of lettered intercourse; and it was 
quite sufficient for my necessities. 

No longer seeking nor caring that my name should 
be blazoned abroad on title-pages, I smiled to think 
that it had now another kind of vogue. The Custom 
House marker imprinted it, with a stencil and black 
paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar- 
boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, 
in testimony that these commodities had paid the im- 
post, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on 
such queer vehicle cof fame, a knowledge of my exist- 
ence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it 
had never been before, and, I hope, will never go again. 

But the past was not dead. Once in a great while, 
the thoughts, that had seemed so vital and so active, 
yet had been put to rest so quietly, revived again. One 
of the most remarkable occasions, when the habit of 
bygone days awoke in me, was that which brings it 
within the law of literary propriety to offer the public 
the sketch which I am now writing. 

In the second story of the Custom House there is a 
large room, in which the brick-work and naked rafters 
have never been covered with panelling and plaster. 
The edifice—originally projected on a scale adapted to 
the old commercial enterprise of the port, and with 
an idea of subsequent prosperity destined never to be 
realized—contains far more space than its occupants 
know what to do with. This airy hall, therefore, over 
the Collector’s apartments, remains unfinished to this 
day, and, in spite of the aged cobwebs that festoon its 
dusky beams, appears still to await the labor of the 
carpenter and mason. At one end of the room, in a 


=~ 


INTRODUCTORY 31 


recess, were a number of barrels, piled one upon an- 
other, containing bundles of official documents. Large 
quantities of similar rubbish lay lumbering the floor. 
It was sorrowful to think how many days and weeks 
and months and years of toil had been wasted on these 
musty papers, which were now only an encumbrance 
on earth, and were hidden away in this forgotten 
corner, never more to be glanced at by human eyes. 
But, then, what reams of other manuscripts—filled not 
with the dulness of official formalities, but with the 
thought of inventive brains and the rich effusion of 
deep hearts—had gone equally to oblivion; and that, 
moreover, without serving a purpose in their day, as 
these heaped-up papers had, and—saddest of all- 
without purchasing for their writers the comfortabie 
livelihood which the clerks of the Custom House had 
gained by these worthless scratchings oi the pen! 
Yet not altogether worthless, perhaps, as materials of 
local history. Here, no doubt, statistics of the former 
commerce of Salem might be discovered, and memo- 
rials of her princely merchants,—old King Derby,— 
old Billy Gray,—old Simon Forrester,—and many 
another magnate in his day; whose powdered head, 
however,-was scarcely in the tomb, before his moun- 
tain pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders 
of the greater part of the families which now compose 
the aristocracy of Salem might here be traced, from 
the petty and obscure beginnings of their traffic, at 
periods generally much posterior to the Revolution, 
upward to what their children look upon as long-estab- 








' Jished rank. 


Prior to the Revolution, there is a dearth of rec- 
ords; the earlier documents and archives of the Cus~ 


32 REL TOS SC Fe (SET AIT Trin 


tom House having, probably, been carried off to Hali- 
fax, when all the King’s officials accompanied the 
British army in its flight from Boston. It has often 
been a matter of regret with me; for, going back, per- 
haps to the days of the Protectorate, those papers must 
have contained many references to forgotten or remem- 
bered men, and to antique customs, which would have 
affected me with the same pleasure as when I used to 
pick up Indian arrow-heads in the field near the Old 
Manse. 

But one idle and rainy day, it was my fortune to 
make a discovery of some little interest. Poking and 
burrowing into the heaped-up rubbish in the corner; 
unfolding one and another document, and reading the 
names of vessels that had long ago foundered at sea 
or rotted at the wharves, and those of merchants never 
heard of now on ’Change, nor very readily decipher- 
able on their mossy tombstones; glancing at such mat- 
ters with the saddened, weary, half-reluctant interest 
which we bestow on the corpse of dead activity,—and 
exerting my fancy, sluggish with little use, to raise 
up from these dry bones an image of the old town’s 
brighter aspect, when India was a new region, and 
only Salem knew the way thither,—I chanced to lay 
my hand on a small package, carefully done up in a 
piece of ancient yellow parchment. This envelope had 
the air of an official record of some period long past, 
when clerks engrossed their stiff and formal chirog- 
raphy on more substantial materials than at present. 
There was something about it that quickened an in- 
stinctive curiosity, and made me undo the faded red 
tape, that tied up the package, with the sense that a 
treasure would here be brought to light. Unbending 


INTRODUCTORY 33 


the rigid folds of the parchment cover I found it to 
be a commission, under the hand and seal of Governor 
Shirley, in favor of one Jonathan Pue, as Surveyor of 
his Majesty's Customs for the port of Salem, in the 
Province of Massachusetts Bay. I remembered to 
have read (probably in Felt’s Annals) a notice of the 
decease of Mr. Surveyor Pue, about fourscore years 
ago; and likewise, in a newspaper of recent times, an 
account of the digging up of his remains in the little 
graveyard of St. Peter’s Church, during the renewal 
of that edifice. Nothing, if I rightly call to mind, was 
left of my respected predecessor, save an imperfect 
skeleton, and some fragments of apparel, and a wig of 
majestic frizzle; which, unlike the head that it once 
adorned, was in very satisfactory preservation. ° But, 
on examining the papers which the parchment com- 
mission served to envelop, I found more traces of Mr. 
Pue’s mental part, and the internal operations of his 
head, than the frizzled wig had contained of the ven- 
erable skull itself. 

They were documents, in short, not official, but of a 
private nature, or, at least, written in his private ca- 
pacity, and apparently with his own hand. I could 
account for their being included in the heap of Cus- 
tom House lumber only by the fact that Mr. Pue’s 
death had happened suddenly; and that these papers, 
which he probably kept in his official desk, had never 
come to the knowledge of his heirs, or were supposed 
to relate to the business of the revenue. On the trans- 
fer of the archives to Halifax, this package, proving to 
be of no public concern, was left behind and had re- 
mained ever since unopened. 

The ancient Surveyor—being little molested, I sup- 


34 TH EYSCARLE TNE Riiei 


pose, at that early day, with business pertaining to his 
office—seems to have devoted some of his many lei- 
sure hours to researches as a local antiquarian, and 
other inquisition of a similar nature. These supplied 
material for petty activity to a mind that would other- 
wise have been eaten up with rust. A portion of his 
_ facts, by the by, did me good service in the preparation 
of the article entitled “Matn STREET,” included in the 
third volume of this edition. The remainder may per- 
haps be applied to purposes equally valuable hereafter ; 
or not impossibly may be worked up, so far as they go, 
into a regular history of Salem, should my veneration 
for the natal soil ever impel me to so pious a task. 
Meanwhile, they shall be at the command of any gen- 
tleman, inclined, and competent, to take the unprofit- 
able labor off my hands. As a final disposition, I con- 
template depositing them with the Essex Historical 
Society. 

But the object that most drew my attention, in the 
mysterious package, was a certain affair of fine red 
cloth, much worn and faded. There were traces about 
it of gold embroidery, which, however, was greatly 
frayed and defaced; so that none, or very little, of the | 
glitter was left. It had been wrought, as was easy to 
perceive, with wonderful skill of needlework; and the 
stitch (as I am assured by ladies conversant with such 
mysteries) gives evidence of a now forgotten art, not 
to be recovered even by the process of picking out the 
threads. This rag of scarlet cloth—for time and 
wear and a sacrilegious moth had reduced it to little 
other than a rag,—on careful examination, assumed 
the shape of a letter. It was the capital letter A. By 
an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be pre- 


INTRODUCTORY 35 


cisely three inches and a quarter in length. It had 
been intended, there could be no doubt, as an orna- 
mental article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or 
what rank, honor, and dignity, in by-past times, were 
signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are 
the fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw 
little hope of solving. And yet it strangely interested 
me. My eyes fastened themselves upon the old scar- 
let letter, and would not be turned aside. Certainly, 
there was some deep meaning in it, most worthy of 
interpretation, and which, as it were, streamed forth 
from the mystic symbol, subtly communicating itself 
to my sensibilities, but evading the analysis of my 
mind. 

While thus perplexed,—and cogitating, among other 
hypotheses, whether the letter might not have been one 
of those decorations which the white men used to con- 
trive, in order to take the eyes of Indians,—I hap- 
pened to place it on my breast. It seemed to me,—the 
reader may smile, but must not doubt my word,—it 
seemed to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not 
altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat; 
and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot 
iron. I shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon 
the floor. 

In the absorbing contemplation of the scarlet letter, 
I had hitherto neglected to examine a small roll of 
dingy paper, around which it had been twisted. This I 
now opened, and had the satisfaction to find, recorded 
by the old Surveyor’s pen, a reasonably complete ex- 
planation of the whole affair. There were several 
foolscap sheets containing many particulars respecting 
the life and conversation of one Hester Prynne, who 


36 THE SCARLET LETTER 


appeared to have been rather a noteworthy personage 
in the view of our ancestors. She had flourished dur- 
ing the period between the early days of Massachusetts 
and the close of the seventeenth century. Aged per- 
sons, alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from 
whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, 
remembered her,-in their youth, as a very old, but. not 
decrepit woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. It 
had been her habit, from an almost immemorial date, 
to go about the country as a kind of voluntary nurse, 
and doing whatever miscellaneous good she might; 
taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all 
matters, especially those of the heart; by which means, 
as a person of such propensities inevitably must, she 
gained from many people the reverence due to an angel, 
but I should imagine, was looked upon by others as 
an intruder and a nuisance. Prying further into the 
manuscript, I found the record of other doings and 
sufferings of this singular woman, for most of which 
the reader is referred to the story entitled “THE Scar- 
LET LETTER”; and it should be borne carefully in mind, 
that the main facts of that storv are authorized and 
authenticated by the document of Mr. Survevor Pue. 
The original papers, together with the scarlet letter 
itself —a most curious relic,—are still in my possession, 
and shall be freely exhibited to whomsoever, induced 
by the great interest of the narrative, may desire a 
sight of them. I must not be understood as affirming, 
that, in the dressine up of the tale. and imagining the 
motives and modes of passion that influenced the char- 
acters who fieure in it. T have invariably confined my- 
self within the limits of the old Survevor’s half a dozen 
sheets of foolscap. On the contrary, I have allowed 


INTRODUCTORY 37 


myself, as to such points, nearly or altogether as much 
license as if the facts had been entirely of my own 
invention. What I contend for is the authenticity of 
the outline. | 

This incident recalled my mind, in some degree, to 
its old track. There seemed to be here the ground- 
-work of a tale. It impressed me as if the ancient Sur- 
veyor, in his garb of a hundred years gone by, and 
wearing his immortal wig,—which was buried with 
him, but did not perish in the grave,—had met me 
in the deserted chamber of the Custom House. In 
his port was the dignity of one who had borne his 
Majesty’s commission, and who was therefore illumi- 
nated by a ray of the splendor that shone so dazzlingly 
about the throne. How unlike, alas! the hang-dog 
look of a republican official, who, as the servant of the 
people, feels himself less than the least, and below the 
lowest, of his masters. With his own ghostly hand, 
the obscurely seen but majestic figure had imparted to 
me the scarlet symbol, and the little roll of explana- 
tory manuscript. With his own ghostly voice he had 
exhorted me, on the sacred consideration of my filial 
duty and reverence towards him,—who might reason- 
ably regard himself as my official ancestor,—to bring 
his mouldy and moth-eaten lucubrations before the pub- 
lic. “Do this,” said the ghost of Mr. Surveyor Pue, 
emphatically nodding the head that looked so imposing 
within its memorable wig,—‘‘do this, and the profit 
shall be all your own! You will shortly need it; for 
it is not in your days as it was in mine, when a man’s 
office was a life-lease, and oftentimes an heirloom. 
But, I charge you, in this matter of old Mistress Prynne. 
give to your predecessor’s memory the credit which 


38 THE SCARLET LETTER 


will be rightfully due!’ And I said to the ghost of 
Mr. Surveyor Pue, “TI will!’ 

On Hester Prynne’s story, therefore, I bestowed 
much thought. It was the subject of my meditations 
for many an hour, while pacing to and fro across my 
room, or traversing, with a hundred-fold repetition, 
the long extent from the front-door of the Custom 
House to the side-entrance, and back again. Great 
were the weariness and annoyance of the old Inspector 
and the Weighers and Gaugers, whose slumbers were 
disturbed by the unmercifully lengthened tramp of my 
passing and returning footsteps. Remembering their 
own former habits, they used to say that the Surveyor 
was walking the quarter-deck. They probably fancied 
that my sole object—and, indeed, the sole object for 
which a sane man could ever put himself into voluntary 
motion—was, to get an appetite for dinner. And to 
say the truth, an appetite, sharpened by the east wind 
that generally blew along the passage, was the only 
valuable result of so much indefatigable exercise. So 
little adapted is the atmosphere of a Custom House to 
the delicate harvest of fancy and sensibility, that, had 
I remained there through ten Presidencies yet to come, 
I doubt whether the tale of “The Scarlet Letter” would 
ever have been brought before the public eye. My 
imagination was a tarnished mirror. It would not 
reflect, or only with miserable dimness, the figures 
with which I did my best to people it. The characters 
of the narrative would not be warmed and rendered 
malleable by any heat that I could kindle at my in- 
tellectual forge. They would take neither the glow of 
passion nor the tenderness of sentiment, but retained all 
the rigidity of dead corpses, and stared me in the face 


INTRODUCTORY 39 


with a fixed and ghastly grin of contemptuous defiance. 
“What have you to do with us?” that expression seemed 
to say. “The little power you might once have pos- 
sessed over the tribe of unrealities is gone! You have 
bartered it for a pittance of the public gold. Go, then, 
and earn your wages!’ In short, the almost torpid 
creatures of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, 
and not without fair occasion. 

Tt was not merely during the three hours and a half 
which Uncle Sam claimed as his share of my daily 
life, that this wretched numbness held possession of 
me. It went with me on mv sea-shore walks, and 
rambles into the country, whenever—which was sel- 
dom and reluctantly—I bestirred myself to seek that 
invigorating charm of Nature, which used to give me 
such freshriess and activity of thought, the moment 
that I stepped across the threshold of the Old Manse. 
The same torpor, as regarded the capacity for in- 
tellectual effort, accompanied me home, and weighed 
upon me in the chamber which I most absurdly termed 
my study. Nor did it quit me, when, late at night, I 
sat in the deserted parlor, lighted only by the glim- 
mering coal-fire and the moon, striving to picture forth 
imaginary scenes, which, the next day, might flow out 
on the brightening page in many-hued description. 

If the imaginative faculty refused to act at such an 
hour, it might well be deemed a hopeless case. Moon- 
light, in a familiar room, falling so white upon the 
carpet, and showing all its figures so distinctly,— 
making every object so minutely visible, yet so unlike 
a morning or noontide visibility,—is a medium the 
most suitable for a romance-writer to get acquainted 
with his illusive guests. There is the little domestic 


40 LH E SOA Rice) ai dy ers 


scenery of the well-known apartment; the chairs with 
each its separate individuality; the centre-table, sus- 
taining a work-basket, a volume or two, and an extin- 
guished lamp; the sofa; the bookcase; the picture on 
the wall—all these details, so completely seen, are 
so spiritualized by the unusual light, that they seem 
to lose their actual substance, and become things of 
intellect. Nothing is too small or too trifling to un- 
dergo this change, and acquire dignity thereby. A 
child’s shoe: the doll, seated in her little wicker car- 
riage; the hobby-horse—whatever, in a word, has 
been used or plaved with, during the day, is now 
invested with a quality of strangeness and remoteness, 
though still almost as vividly present as by daylight. 
Thus, therefore, the floor of our familiar room has 
become a neutral territory, somewhere between the 
real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the 
Imaginary may meet, and each imbue itself with the 
nature of the other. Ghosts might enter here, with- 
out affrighting us. It would be too much in keeping 
with the scene to excite surprise, were we to look 
about us and discover a form beloved, but gone hence, 
now sitting quietly in a streak of this magic moon- 
shine, with an aspect that would make us doubt whether 
it had returned from afar, or had never once stirred 
from our fireside. 

The somewhat dim coal-fire has an essential influ- 
ence in producing the effect which I would describe. 
It throws its unobtrusive tinge throughout the room, 
with a faint ruddiness upon the walls and ceiling, and 
a reflected gleam from the polish of the furniture. 
This warmer light mingles itself with the cold spirit- 
uality of the moonbeams, and communicates, as it 


eS a ee ee 


! 


INTRODUCTORY AI 


were, a heart and sensibilities of human tenderness 
to the forms which fancy summons up. It converts 
them from snow-images into men and women. Glanc- 
ing at the looking-glass, we behold—deep within its 
haunted verge—the smouldering glow of the half- 
extinguished anthracite, the white moonbeams on the 
floor, and a repetition of all the gleam and shadow of 
the picturé, with one remove further from the actual, 
and nearer to the imaginative. Then, at such an hour, 
and with this scene before him, if a man, sitting all 
alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them 
look like truth, he need never try to write romances. 

But, for myself, during the whole of my Custom 
House experience, moonlight and sunshine, and the 
glow of firelight, were just alike in my regard; and 
neither of them was of one whit more avail than the 
twinkle of a tallow-candle. An entire class of sus- 
ceptibilities, and a gift connected with them,—of no 
great richness or value, but the best I had,—was gone 
from me. 

It is my belief, however, that, had I attempted a 
different order of composition, my faculties would not 
have been found so pointless and inefficacious. I 
might, for instance, have contented myself with writ- 
ing out the narratives of a veteran shipmaster, one of 
the Inspectors, whom I should be most ungrateful not 
to mention. since scarcely a day passed that he did not 
stir me to laughter and admiration by his marvellous 
gifts as a story-teller. Could I have preserved the 
picturesaue force ef his style, and the humorous color- 
ing which nature taught him how to throw over his 
descriptions, the result, I honestly believe, would 
have been something new in literature. Or I might 


42 THE SCARLET LETTER 


readily have found a more serious task. It was a 
folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing 
so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself 
back into another age; or to insist on creating the 
semblance of a world out of airy matter, when, at 
every moment, the impalpable beauty of my soap- 
bubble was broken by the rude contact of some actual 
circumstance. The wiser effort would have been to 
diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque 
substance of to-day, and thus to make it a bright 
transparency; to spiritualize the burden that began to 
weigh so heavily; to seek,. resolutely, the true and 
indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and 
wearisome incidents, and ordinary characters, with 
which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. 
The page of life that was spread out before me seemed 
dull and commonplace, only because I had not fath- 
omed its deeper import. A better book than 1 shall 
ever write was there; leaf after leaf presenting itself 
to me, just as it was written out by the reality of the 
flitting hour, and vanishing as fast as written, only be- 
cause my brain wanted the insight and my hand the 
cunning to transcribe it. At some future day, it may 
be, I shall remember a few scattered fragments and 
broken paragraphs, and write them down, and find the 
letters turn to gold upon the page. 

These perceptions have come too late. At the in- 
stant, | was only conscious that what would have been 
a pleasure once was now a hopeless toil. There was 
no occasion to make much moan about this state of 
affairs. I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor 
tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good 
Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, never- 


INTRODUCTORY 44 


theless, it is anything but agreeable to be haunted by 
a suspicion that one’s intellect is dwindling away; or 
exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of 
a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller 
and less volatile residuum. Of the fact there could be 
no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was 
led to conclusions, in reference to the effect of public 
office on the character, not very favorable to the mode 
of life in question. In some other form, perhaps, I 
may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here 
to say, that a Custom House officer, of long continu- 
ance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable 
personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure 
by which he holds his situation, and another, the very 
nature of his business, which—though, I trust, an 
honest one—is of such a sort that he does not share 
in the united effort of mankind. 

An effect—which I believe to be observable, more 
or less, in every individual who has occupied the posi- 
tion—is, that, while he leans on the mighty arm of 
the Republic, his own proper strength departs from 
him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weak- 
ness or force of his original nature, the capability of 
self-support. If he possess an unusual share of na- | 
tive energy, or the enervating magic of place do not — 
operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may 
be redeemable. The ejected officer—fortunate in the 
unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes to strug- 
gle amid a struggling world—may return to himself, 
and become all that he has ever been. But this sel- 
dom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long 
enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with 
sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult foot 





44. DET ESS GEIGER iors Tre x 


path of life as he best may. Conscious of his own in- 
firmity,—that his tempered steel and elasticity are 
lost,—he forever afterwards looks wistfully about him 
in quest of support external to himself. His pervad- 
ing and continual hope—a hallucination which, in the 
face of all discouragement, and making light of impos- 
sibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like 
the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for 
a brief space after death—is that finally, and in no 
long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, 
he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than 
anything else, steals the pith and availability out of 
whatever enterprise he may dream of undertakmg. 
Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much 
trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a 
little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will 
raise and support him? Why should he work for his 
living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is 
so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a 
little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle’s pocket? 
It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of of- 
fice suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular 
disease. Uncle Sam’s gold—meaning no disrespect to 
the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect, a 
quality of enchantment like that of the Devil’s wages. 
Wheever touches it should look well to himself, or he 
may find the bargain to go hard against him, involv- 
ing, 1f not his soul, yet many of its better wttributes; 
its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, 
its self-reliance, and all that gives the emiphasis to 
manly character. 

Here was a fine prospect in the distance! Not that 
the Surveyor brought, the lesson home to himself, or 








INTRODUCTORY As 


admitted that he could be so utterly undone, either by 
continuance in office or ejectment. Yet my reflections 
were not the most comfortable. I began to grow mel- 
ancholy and restless; continually prying into my mind, 
to discover which of its poor properties were gone, and 
what degree of detriment had already accrued to the ° 
remainder. I endeavored to calculate how much longer 
I could stay in the Custom House, and yet go forth a 
man. To confess the truth, it was my greatest appre- 
hension,—as it would never be a measure of policy 
to turn out so quiet an individual as myself, and it be- 
ing hardly in the nature of a public officer to resign,— 
it was my chief trouble, therefore, that I was likely to 
grow gray and decrepit in the Surveyorship, and be- 
come much such another animal as the old Inspector. 
Might it not, in the tedious lapse of official life that 
Jay before me, finally be with me as it was with this 
venerable friend,—to make the dinner-hour the nu- 
cleus of the day, and to spend the rest of it, as an old 
dog spends it, asleep in the sunshine or in the shade? 
A dreary look-forward this, for a man who felt it to 
be the best definition of happiness to live throughout 
the whole range of his faculties and sensibilities! But, 
all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary 
alarm. Providence had meditated better things for 
me than I could possibly imagine for myself. 

A remarkable event of the third year of my Survey: 
orship—to adopt the tone of “‘P. P.’’—was the elec- 
tion of General Taylor to the Presidency. It is essen- 
tial, in order to a complete estimate of the advantages 
of official life, to view the iticumbent at the incoming 
of a hostile administration. His position is then one of 
the most singularly irksome, and, in every contingency. 


16 Fie Toa OV UME OTR IEA IRIS ch ce 

disagreeable, that a wretched mortal can possibly oc- 
cupy; with seldom an alternative of good, on either 
hand, although what presents itself to him as the worst 
event may very probably be the best. But it is a 
strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, 
to know that his interests are within the control of in- 
dividuals who neither love nor understand him, and by 
whom, since one or the other must need happen, he 
would rather be injured than obliged. Strange, too, 
for one who has kept his calmness throughout the con- 
_ test, to observe the blood thirstiness that is developed 
in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he is 
himself among its objects! There are few uglier traits 
of human nature than this tendency—which I now 
witnessed in men no worse than their neighbors—to 
grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power 
of inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to 
office holders, were a literal fact instead of one of the 
most apt of metaphors, it is my sincere belief that the 
active members of the victorious party were sufficiently 
excited to have chopped off all our heads, and have 
thanked Heaven for the opportunity! It appears to 
me—who have been a calm and curious observer, as 
well in victory as defeat—that this fierce and bitter 
spirit of malice and revenge has never distinguished 
the many triumphs of my own party as it now did that 
of the Whigs. The Democrats take the offices, as a 
general rule, because they need them, and because the 
practice of many years has made it the law of political 
warfare, which, unless a different system be proclaimed, 
it were weakness and cowardice to murmur at. But 
the long habit of victory has made them generous. 
They know how to spare, when they see occasion; and 


INTRODUCTORY 47 


when they strike, the axe may be sharp, indeed, but 
its edge is seldom poisoned with ill-will; nor is it their 
custom ignominiously to kick the head which they 
have just struck off. 

In short, unpleasant as was my predicament, at best, 
I saw much reason to congratulate myself that I was 
on the losing side, rather than the triumphant one. 
If, heretofore, I had been none of the warmest of par- 
tisans, I began now, at this season of peril and adver- 
sity, to be pretty acutely sensible with which party my 
predilections lay; nor was it without something like 
regret and shame, that, according to a reasonable cal- 
culation of chances, I saw my own prospect of retain- 
ing office to be better than those of my Democratic 
brethren. But who can see an inch into futurity be- 
yond his nose? My own head was the first that fell! 

The moment when a man’s head drops off is seldom 
or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most 
agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater 
part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency 
brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the suf- 
ferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of 
the accident which has befallen him. In my particu 
lar case, the consolatory topics were close at hand, and, 
indeed, had suggested themselves to my meditations a 
considerable time before it was requisite to use them. 
In view of my previous weariness of office, and vague 
thoughts of resignation, my fortune somewhat resem- 
bled that of a person who should entertain an idea 
of committing suicide, and, although beyond his hopes, 
meet with the good hap to be murdered. In the Cus- 
tom House, as before in the Old Manse, I had spent 
three years; a term long enough to rest a weary brain; 


AS LIT BOS OA RIVE IRS ee i 


Jong enough to break off old intellectual habits and 
make room for new ones; long enough, and too long, 
to have lived in an unnatural state, doing what was 
really of no advantage nor delight to any human being, 
and withholding myself from toil that would, at least, 
have stilled an unquiet impulse in me. Then, more- 
over, as regarded his unceremonious ejectment, the 
late Survevor was not altogether ill-pleased to be recog- 
nized hy the Whigs as an enemy; since his inactivity in 
political affairs—his tendency to roam, at will, in that 
broad and quiet field where all mankind may meet, 
rather than confine himself to those narrow paths where 
brethren of the same household must diverge from one 
another—had sometimes made it questionable with his 
brother Democrats whether he was a friend. Now, 
after he had won the crown of martyrdom (though ~ 
with no longer a head to wear it on), the point might 
be looked upon as settled. Finally, little heroic as he 
was, it seemed more decorous to be overthrown in the 
downfall of the party with which he had been con- 
tent to stand, than to remain a forlorn survivor, when 
so many worthier men were falling; and, at last, after 
subsisting for four years on the mercy of a hostile 
administration, to be compelled then to define his posi- 
tion anew, and claim the yet more humiliating mercy 
of a friendly one. 

Meanwhile the press had taken up my affair, and — 
kept me, for a week or two, careering through the pub- 
lic prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving’s Head- 
less Horseman; ghastly and grim, and longing to be 
buried, as a politically dead man ought. So much for 
my figurative self. The real human being, all this 
time with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought 


INTRODUCTORY AQ 


himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything 
was for the best; and, making an investment in ink, 
paper, and steel-pens, had opened his long-disused writ- 
ing-desk, and was again a literary man. - 

Now it was that the lucubrations of my ancient 
predecessor, Mr. Surveyor Pue, came into play. Rusty 
through long idleness, some little space was requisite 
before my intellectual machinery could be brought to 
work upon the tale, with an effect in any degree satis- 
factory. Even yet, though my thoughts were ulti- 
mately much absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, 
a stern and sombre aspect; too much ungladdened by 
_ genial sunshine; too 1ittle revealed by the tender and 
familiar influences which soften almost every scene of 
nature and real life, and, undoubtedly, should soften 
every picture of them. This uncaptivating effect is 
perhaps due to the period of hardly accomplished revo- 
lution, and still seething turmoil, in which the story 
shaped itself. It is no indication, however, of a lack 
of cheerfulness in the writer’s mind; for he was hap- 
pier, while straying through the gloom of these sunless 
fantasies, than at any time since he had quitted the Old 
Manse. Some of the briefer articles, which contrib- 
ute to make up the volume, have likewise been written 
since my involuntary withdrawal from the toils and 
honors of public life, and the remainder are gleaned 
from annuals and magazines of such antique date that 
they have gone round the circle, and come back to 
novelty again.* Keeping up the metaphor of the po- 
litical guillotine, the whole may be considered as the 
PostHUMOUS PAPERS OF A DECAPITATED SURVEYOR; 


1At the time of writing this article, the author intended to 
publish, along with The Scarlet Letter, several shorter tales and 
sketches. These it has been thought advisable to defer. 


50 THE SCARLET LETTER 


and the sketch which I am now bringing to a close, 
if too autobiographical for a modest person to publish 
in his lifetime, will readily be excused in a gentleman 
who writes from beyond the grave. Peace be with all 
the world! My blessing on my friends! My forgive- 
ness to my enemies! For I am in the realm of quiet! 

The life of the Custom House lies like a dream be- 
hind me. The old Inspector,—who, by the by, I re- 
gret to say, was overthrown and killed by a horse, 
some time ago; else he would certainly have lived 
forever,—he, and all those other venerable person- 
ages who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are 
but shadows in my view; white-headed and wrinkled 
images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has 
now flung aside forever. The merchants,—Pingree, 
Phillips,, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt,— 
these, and many other names, which had such a classic 
familiarity for my ear six months ago,—these men of 
traffic, who seemed to occupy so important a position 
in the world,—how little time has it required to dis- 
connect me from them all, not merely in act, but recol- 
lection! It is with an effort that I recatl the figures 
and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise, my old 
native town will loom upon me through the haze of 
memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it 
were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown 
village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants 
to people its wooden houses, and walk its homely lanes, 
and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. 
Henceforth it ceases to be a reality cf my life. I am 
a citizen of somewhere else. My good townspeople 
will not much regret me; for—though it has been as 
dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of 


INTRODUCTORY 5) 


some importance in their eyes and to win myself a 
pleasant memory in this abode and burial-place of so 
many of my forefathers—there has never been, for me, 
the genial atmosphere which a literary man. requires, 
in order to ripen the best harvest of his mind. I 
shall do better ‘amongst other faces; and these familiar 
ones, it need hardly be said, will do just as well with- 
out me. 

It may he, however,—oh, transporting and trium- 
phant thought!—that the great-grandchildren of the 
present race may sometimes think kindly of the scrib- 
bler of bygone days, when the antiquary of days ta 
come, among the sites memorable in the town’s history, 
shail point out the locality of THe Town Pump, 


T 
THE F RISON-DOOR 


A tHRONG of bearded men, in sad-colored gar- 
ments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with 
women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, 
was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door 
of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded 
with iron spikes. 

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of 
human virtue and happiness they might originally pro- 
ject, have invariably recognized it among their earliest 
practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil 
as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a 
prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be 
assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the 
first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of Corn- 
hill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first 
burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson’s lot, and round about 
his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of 
all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard 
of King’s Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or 
twenty years after the settlement of the town, the 
wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains 
and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker 
aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The 
rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door 
looked more antique than anything else in the New 

52 


THE PRISON-DOOR 53 


World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed 
never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly 
edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, 
was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig- 
weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which 
evidently found something congenial in the soil that 
had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, 
a prison. But, on one side of the portal, and rooted 
almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, 
in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which, 
might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile 
beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the con- 
demned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token 
that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind 
to him. 

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept 
alive in history; but whether it had merely survived 
out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall 
of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally over- 
shadowed it,—or whether, as there is fair authority 
for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of 
the sainted Anne Hutchinson, as she entered the prison- 
door,—we shall not take upon us to determine. Find. 
ing it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, 
which is now about to issue from that inauspicious 
portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one 
of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may 
serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blos- 
som, that may be found along the track, or relieve the 
darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow. 


if 
THE MARKET-PLACE 


THE grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on 
a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries 
ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the 
inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently 
fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst 
any other population, or at a later period in the history 
of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the 
bearded physiognomies of these good people would 
have augured some awful business in hand. It could 
have betokened nothing short of the anticipated exe- 
cution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of 
a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of pub- 
lic sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puri- 
tan character, an inference of this kind could not so 
indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish 
bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents 
had given over to the civil authority, was to be cor- 
rected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an 
Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist 
was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle and 
vagrant Indian, whom the white man’s fire-water had 
made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with 
stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, 
too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter- 
‘empered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon 

54. 


RUE A RICE) PEACE 55 


the gallows. In either case, there was very much the 
same solemnity of demeanor on the part of the spec- 
tators; as befitted a people amongst whom religion 
and law were almost identical, and in whose character 
both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest 
and the severest acts of public discipline were alike 
made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold 
was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for 
from such by-standers, at the scaffold. On the other 
hand, a penalty, which, in our days, would infer a de- 
gree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be 
invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punish- 
ment of death itself. 

It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer 
morning when our story begins its course, that the 
women, of whom there were several in the crowd, ap- 
peared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal 
infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had 
not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety 
restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from 
stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their 
not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the 
throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, 
as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those 
wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding, 
than in their fair descendants, separated from them by 
a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout 
that chain of ancestry, every successive mother has 
transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more deli- 
cate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, 
if not a character of less force and solidity, than her 
own. The women who were now standing about the 
prison-door stood within less than half a century of 


56 THE SCARLET LETTER 


the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the 
not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. 
They were her countrywomen; and the beef and ale 
of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more 
refined, entered largely into their composition. The 
bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoul- 
ders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy 
cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had 
hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere 
pf New England. There was, moreover, a boldness 
and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most 
of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the 
present day, whether in respect to its purport or its 
volume of tone. 

“Goodwives,” said a hard-featured dame of fifty, 
“T’ll tell ye a piece of my mind. It would be greatly 
for the public behoof, if we women, being of mature 
age and church-members in good repute, should have 
the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester 
Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood 
un for judgment before us five, that are now here in a 
knot together, would she come off with such a sentence 
as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, 
T trow not?’ 

“People say,” said another, “that the Reverend Mas- 
ter Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very griev- 
ouslv to heart that such a scandal should have come 
upon his coneregation.” 

“The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but 
merciful overmuch,—that is a truth,” added a third 
auttimnal matron. “At the very least. they should 
have put the hrand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s 
forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that. 


Pi heM ARISE TPL AGE 57 


I warrant me. But she,—the naughty baggage,—little 
will she care what they put upon the bodice of her 
gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, 
or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the 
streets as brave as ever!” 

“Ah, but,” interposed, more softly, a young wife, 
holding a child by the hand, “let her cover the mark 
as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.” 

“What do we talk of marks and brands, whether 
on the bodice of her gown, or the flesh of her fore- 
head?” cried another female, the ugliest as well as the 
most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. ‘This 
woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to 
die. Is there not law for it? Truly, there is, both in 
the Scripture and the statute-book. Then let the magis- 
trates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves 
if their own wives and daughters go astray!” 

“Mercy on us, goodwife,” exclaimed a man in the 
crowd, “is there no virtue in woman, save what springs 
from a wholesome fear of the gallows? That is the 
hardest word yet! Hush, now, gossips! for the lock 
is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress 
Prynne herself.” 

The door of the jail being flung open from within, 
there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow 
emerging into sunshine, the grim and grisly presence 
of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his 
staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured 
and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity 
of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business 
_ to administer in its final and closest application to the 
offender. Stretching forth the official staff in his left 
hand, he laid his right yon the shoulder of a young 


58 THES CARPE TALERR ET 


woman, whom he thus drew forward; until, on the 
threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an 
action marked with natural dignity and force of char- 
acter, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own 
free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of 
some three months old, who winked and turned aside 
its little face from the too vivid light of day; because 
its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquainted only 
with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome 
apartment of the prison. 

When the young woman—the mother of this child 
—stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to 
be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her 
bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affec- 
tion, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, 
which was wrought or fastened into her dress. Ina 
moment, however, wisely judging that one token of 
her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she 
took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, 
and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not 
be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and 
neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red 
cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and 
fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter 
A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fer- 
tility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all 
the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel 
which she wore; and which was of a splendor in ac- 
cordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond 
what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of 
the colony. 

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect 
elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant © 


HE MARKETPLACE 59 


hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a 
gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from 
regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had 
the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and 
deep black eyes: She was lady-like, too, after the 
manner of the feminine gentility of those days; char- 
acterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than 
by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, 
which is now recognized as its indication. And never 
had Hester Prynne appeared more lady-like, in the 
antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued 
from the prison. Those who had before known her, 
and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured 
by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, 
to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo 
of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was en- 
veloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, 
there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her 
attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, 
in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, 
seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate 
recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque 
peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it 
were, transfigured the wearer,—so that both men and 
women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester 
Prynne, were now impressed as if they beheld her for 
the first time,— was that ScarLet LETTER, so fantasti- 
cally embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It 
had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary 
relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere 
by herself. ; 

“She hath good skill at her needle, that’s certain,” 
remarked one of her female spectators; “but did ever a, 


60 DAES CA Ey OES Dal hae 


woman, before this brazen huzzy, contrive such a way 
of showing it! Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh 
in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride 
out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punish- 
ment ?”’ 

“Tt were well,”” muttered the most iron-visage of the 
old dames, “if we stripped Madame Hester’s rich gown 
off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter, which 
she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a rag of 
mine own rheumatic flannel, to make a fitter one!” 

“Oh, peace, neighbors, peace!’ whispered their 
youngest companion; “do not let her hear you! Not 
a stitch in that embroidered letter, but she has felt it in 
her heart.) 

The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. 

“Make way, good people, make way, in the King’s 
name!’ cried he. “Open a passage; and, I promise ye, 
Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and 
child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel, from 
this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the 
righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity 
is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madam 
Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market- 
place!” 

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of 
spectators. Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an 
irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly 
visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the 
place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager 
and curious school-boys, understanding little of the 
matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, 
ran before her progress, turning their heads continually 
to stare into her face, and at the winking baby in her 


THE MARKET-PLACE 54% 


arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast. It 
was no great distance, in those days, from the prison- 
door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner’s 
experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of 
some length; for, haughty as her demeanor was, she 
perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of 
those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been 
flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample 
upon. In our nature, however, there is a provision, 
alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should 
never know the intensity of what he endures by its 
present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after 
it. Wuth almost a serene deportment, therefore, Hester 
Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and 
came to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of 
the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of 
Boston’s earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture 
there. 

In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal 
machine, which now, for two or three generations past, 
has been merely historical and traditionary among us, 
but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent, 
in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the 
guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in 
short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the 
framework of that instrument of discipline, so fash- 
ioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, 
and thus holding it up to the public gaze. The very 
ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in 
this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no 
outrage, methinks, against our common nature,—what- 
ever be the delinquencies of the individual,—no outrage 
more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face 


62 THEY SCARE IIE Iran 


for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to 
do. In Hester Prynne’s instance, however, as not un- 
frequently in other cases, her sentence bore, that she 
should stand a certain time upon the platform, but with- 
out undergoing that gripe about the neck and confine- 
ment of the head, the proneness to which was the most 
devilish charactéristic of this ugly engine. Knowing 
well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, 
and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at 
about the height of a man’s shoulders above the street. 

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puri- 
tans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so 
picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant 
at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of 
Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters 
have vied with one another to represent; ‘something 
which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, 
of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose in- 
fant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the 
taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human 
life, working such effect, that the world was only the 
darker for this woman’s beauty, and the more lost for 
the infant that she had borne. 

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as 


must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in 


a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown cor- 
rupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it. The 
witnesses of Hester Prynne’s disgrace had not yet 
passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern 
enough to look upon her death, had that been the sen- 
tence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none 
of the heartlessness of another social state, which would 
find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the pres- 


THE IMARKET-RLACE 63 


ent. Even had there been a disposition to turn the 
matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and 
- overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less 
dignified than the Governor, and several of his coun- 
sellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the 
town; all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the 
meeting-house, looking down upon the platform. When 
such personages could constitute a part of the spectacle, 
without risking the majesty or reverence of rank and 
office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of 
a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual 
meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and 
grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a 
woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand 
unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concen- 
trated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be 
borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had 
fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous 
stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every 
variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more 
terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that 
she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances 
contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the ob- 
ject. Hada roar of laughter burst from the multitude, 
—each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, 
contributing their individual parts,;—Hester Prynne 
might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful © 
smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was 
her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she 
must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, 
and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the 
ground, or else go mad at once. 

Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in 


~ 


64 TARE SGARL EVIL LT iirik 


which she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to. 
vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly 
before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and 
spectral images. Her mind, and especially her mem- 
ory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up 
other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little 
town, on the edge of the Western wilderness; other 
faces than were lowering upon her from beneath the 
brims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences 
the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy 
and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little 
domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming 
back upon her, intermingled with recollections of what- 
ever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture 
precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar 
importance, or all alike a play. Possibly, it was an in- 
stinctive device of her spirit, to relieve itself, by the ex- 
hibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel 
weight and hardness of the reality. 

Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a 
point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire 
track along which she had been treading since her happy 
infancy. Standing on that miserable eminence, she saw 
again her native village, in Old England, and her pa- 
ternal home; a decayed house of gray stone, with a 
poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half-obliterated 
shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gen- 
tility. She saw her father’s face, with its bald brow, 
and reverend white beard, that flowed over the old- 
fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her mother’s, too, with the 
look of heedful and anxious love which it always wore 
in her remembrance, and which, even since her death, 
had so often laid the impediment of a gentle remon- 





THE MARKET-PLACE 65 


strance in her daughter’s pathway. She saw her own 
face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all 
the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been 
wont to gaze at it. There she beheld another coun- 
tenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, 
scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the 
lamplight that had served them to pore over many 
ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a 
strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner’s 
purpose to read the human soul. This figure of the 
study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne’s womanly 
fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with 
the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. Next 
rose before her, in memory’s picture-gallery, the intri- 
cate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, gray houses, 
the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in 
date and quaint in architecture, of a Continental city; 
where a new life had awaited her, still in connection 
with the misshapen scholar; a new life, but feeding it- 
self on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss 
on a crumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting 
scenes, came back the rude market-place of the Puritan 
settlement, with all the townspeople assembled and 
levelling their stern regards at Hester Prynne,—yes, at 
herself,—who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an 
infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantas- 
tically embroidered with gold-thread, upon her bosom! 
Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely 
to her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her 
eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it 
with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and 
the shame were real. Yes!—these were her realities,— 
all else had vanished! | 


Til 
THE RECOGNITION 


From this intense consciousness of being the object 
of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the 
scarlet letter was at length relieved, by discerning, on 
the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly 
took possession of her thoughts. An Indian, in his na- 
tive garb, was standing there; but the red men were not 
so infrequent visitors of the English settlements, that 
one of them would have attracted any notice from Hes- 
ter Prynne at such a time; much less would he have ex- 
cluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. By 
the Indian’s side, and evidently sustaining a companion- 
ship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange dis- 
array of civilized and savage costume. 

He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, 
which, as yet, could hardly be termed aged. There was 
a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person 
who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not 
fail to mould the physical to itself, and become mani- 
fest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly 
careless arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had 
endeavored to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was 
sufficiently evident to Hester Prynne that one of this 
man’s shoulders rose higher than the other. Again, at 
the first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the 
slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to 

66 


THE RECOGNITION 67 


her bosom with so convulsive a force that the poor babe 
uttered another cry of pain. But the mother did not 
seem to hear it. 

At his arrival in the market-place, and some time be- 
fore she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on 
Hester Prynne. It was carelessly, at first, like a man 
chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom ex- 
ternal matters are of little value and import, unless they 
bear relatien to something within his mind. Very soon, 
however, his look became keen and penetrative. A 
writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a 
snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little 
pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. 
His face darkened with some powerful emotion, which, 
nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled by an 
effort of his will, that, save at a single moment, its 
expression might have passed for calmness. After a 
brief space, the convulsion grew almost imperceptible, 
and finally subsided into the depths of his nature. When 
he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his 
own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he 
slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture 
with it in the air, and laid it on his lips. 

Then; touching the shoulder of a townsman who 
stood next to him, he addressed him, in a formal and 
courteous manner. 

“T° pray you, good’ Sir,’ said he,),‘who jis) this 
woman ?—and wherefore is she here set up to public 
shame?” 

“You must needs be a stranger in this region, 
friend,’ answered the townsman, looking curiously at 
the questioner and his savage companion, “else you 
would surely have heard of Mistress Hester Prynne, 


68 DEE SGAIR ITS Tera hie 


and her evil doings. She hath raised a great scandal, 
I promise you, in godly Master Dimmesdale’s church.” 

“You say truly,” repiled the other. “I am a stranger, 
and have been a wanderer, sorely against my will. I 
have met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and 
have been long held in bonds among the heathen-folk, 
to the southward; and am now brought hither by this 
Indian to be redeemed out of my captivity. Will it 
please you, therefore, to tell me of Hester Prynne’s,— 
have I her name rightly?——-of this woman’s offences, 
and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?” 

“Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your 
heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilder- 
ness,” said the townsman, “to find yourself, at length, 
in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished 
in the sight of rulers and people, as here in our godly 
New England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, 
was the wife of a certain learned man, English by birth, 
but who had long dwelt in Amsterdam, whence, some 
good time agone, he was minded to cross over and cast 
in his lot with us of the Massachusetts. To this pur- 
pose, he sent his wife before him, remaining himself to 
look after some necessary affairs. Marry, good Sir, in 
some two years, or less, that the woman has been a 
dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this 
learned gentleman, Master Prynne; and his young wife, 
look you, being left to her own misguidance’”’— 

“Ah !—aha !—I conceive you,” said the stranger with 
a bitter smile. ‘So learned a man as you speak of 
should have learned this too in his books. And who, 
by your favor, Sir, may be the father of yonder babe— 
It is some three or four months old, I should judge— 
which Mistress Prynne is nolding in her arms?” 


THE RECOGNITION 69 


“Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle: 
and the Daniel who shall expound it is yet a-wanting,” 
answered the townsman. ‘Madam Hester absolutely 
refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their 
heads together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one 
‘stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of 
man, and forgetting that God sees him.” 

“The learned man,” observed the stranger, with an- 
other smile, “should come himself, to look into the 
mystery.” 

“It behooves him well, if he be still in life,” re- 
sponded the townsman. “Now, good Sir, our Massa- 
chusetts magistracy, bethinking themselves that this 
woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was strongly 
tempted to her fall,—and that, moreover, as is most 
likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea,— 
they have not been bold to put in forcé the extremity of 
our righteous law against her. The penalty thereof is 
death. But in their great mercy and tenderness of 
heart, they have doomed Mistress Prynne to stand only 
a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, 
and then and thereafter, for the remainder of her nat- 
ural life, to wear a mark of shame upon her bosom.” 

“A wise sentence!’ remarked the stranger, gravely 
bowing his head. “Thus she will be a living sermon 
against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved 
upon her tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, that the 
partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on 
the scaffold by her side. But he will be known!—he 
will be known !—he will be known!’ 

He bowed courteously to the communicative towns- 
man, and, whispering a few words to his Indian at- 
tendant, they both made their way through the crowd. 


70 PAR WSOARLE TNE Bi iade 


While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing 
on her pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the 
stranger; so fixed a gaze, that, at moments of intense 
absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed 
to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such an inter- 
view, perhaps, would have been more terrible than even 
to meet him as she now did, with the hot, midday sun 
burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame; 
with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the 
sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn 


forth, as to a festival, staring at the features that should 


have been seen only in the quiet gleam of the 
fireside, in the happy shadow of a home, or beneath a 
matronly veil, at church. Dreadful as it was, she was 
conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand 
witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so many 
betwixt him and her, than to greet him, face to face, 
they two alone. She fled for refuge, as it were, to the 
public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its pro- 
tection should be withdrawh from her. Involved in 
these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her, 
until it had repeated her name more than once, in a 
loud and solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude. 

“Hearken unto me, Hester Prynne!” said the voice. 

It has already been noticed, that directly over the 
platform on which Hester Prynne stood was a kind of 
balcony, or open gallery, appended to the meeting-house. 
It was the place whence proclamations were wont to 
be made, amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with 
all the ceremonial that attended such public observances 
in those days. Here, to witness the scene which we 
are describing, sat Governor Bellingham himself, with 
four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a 


a — = 
ee SS Se eee eee 


THE RECOGNITION 74 


guard of honor. He wore a dark feather in his hat, 
a border of embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet 
tunic beneath; a gentleman advanced in years, with a 
hard experience written in his wrinkles. He was not 
ill fitted to be the head and representative of a com- 
munity, which owed its origin and progress, and its 
present state of development, not to the impulses of 
youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of man- 
hood, and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so 
much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. 
The other eminent characters, by whom the chief ruler 
was surrounded, were distinguished by a dignity of 
mien, belonging to a period when the forms of authority 
were felt to possess the sacredness of Divine institu- 
tions. They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. 
But, out of the whole human family, it would not have 
been easy to select the same number of wise and virtu- 
ous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in 
judgment on an erring woman’s heart, and disen- 
tangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of 
rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned 
her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever 
sympathy she might expect lay in the larger and warmer 
heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes to- 
wards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale and 
trembled. 

The voice which had called her attention was that of 
the reverend and famous John Wilson, the eldest clergy- 
man of Boston, a great scholar, like most of his con- 
temporaries in the profession, and withal a man of 
kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however, 


had been less carefully developed than his intellectual 


gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than 


72 THE SCARE Eile isi ian 


self-congratulation with him. There he stood, with a 
border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap; while his 
gray eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, 
were winking, like those of Hester’s infant, in the un- 


/ 


adulterated sunshine. He looked like the darkly en- — 


eraved portraits which we see prefixed to old volumes of 
sermons; and had no more right than one of those por- 
traits would have to step forth, as he now did, and 
meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and 
anguish. 

“Hester Prynne,” said the clergyman, “I have striven 
with my young brother here, under whose preaching of 
the word you have been privileged to sit,’—here Mr. 


Wilson laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young — 


man beside him,—“I have sought, I say, to persuade 
this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here in 
the face of Heaven, and before these wise and upright 


rulers, and in hearing of all the people, as touching the | 


vileness and blackness of your sin. Knowing your nat- 
ural temper better than I, he could the better judge 


what arguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, | 


such as might prevail over your hardness and obstinacy; 
insomuch that you should no longer hide the name of 
him who tempted you to this grievous fall. But he op- 
poses to me (with a young man’s over-softness, albeit 
wise beyond his years) that it were wronging the very 
nature of woman to force her to lay open her heart’s 
secrets in such broad daylight, and in the presence of 
so great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to convince 
him, the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and 
not in the showing of it forth. What say you to it, 
once again, Brother Dimmesdale? Must it be thou, or 
J, that shall deal with this poor sinner’s soul?” 


7 


a 


THE RECOGNITION 73 


There was a murmur among the dignified and rev- 
erend occupants of the balcony; and Governor Belling- 
ham gave expression to its purport, speaking in an au 
thoritative voice, although tempered with respect to- 
wards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed. 

“Good Master Dimmesdale,” said he, “the responsi- 
bility of this woman’s soul lies greatly with you. It 
behooves you, therefore, to exhort her to repentance, 
and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof.” 

The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the 
whole crowd upon the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale; a 
young clergyman, who had come from one of the great 
English universities, bringing all the learning of the age 
into our wild forest-land. His eloquence and religious 
fervor had already given the earnest of high eminence 
in his profession. He was a person of very striking 
aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow, large, 
brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless 
when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremu- 
lous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast 
power of self-restraint. Notwithstanding his high na- 
tive gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air 
about this young minister,—an apprehensive, a startled, 
a half-frightened look,—as of a being who felt himself : 
quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human 
existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of 
his own. Therefore, so far as his duties would permit, 
he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thus kept himself 
simple and childlike; coming forth, when occasion was, 
with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of 
thought, which, as many people said, affected them like 
the speech of an angel. 


74 THE SCARE Teh i tit ie 


Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr. 
Wilson and the Governor had introduced so openly to 
the public notice, bidding him speak, in the hearing of 
all men, to that mystery of a woman’s soul, so sacred 
even in its pollution. The trying nature of his position 
drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips trem- 
ulous. 

“Speak to the woman, my brother,” said Mr. Wilson. 
“Tt is of moment to her soul, and therefore, as the wor- 
shipful Governor says, momentous to thine own, in 
whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the truth!’ 

The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, in 
silent prayer, as it seemed, and then came forward. 

“Hester Prynne,” said he, leaning over the balcony 
and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, “thou 
hearest what this good man says, and seest the accounta- 
bility under which I labor. If thou feelest it to be for 
thy soul’s peace, and that thy earthly punishment will 
thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge 
thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and 
fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity 
and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though 
he were to step down from a high place, and stand there 
beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it 
so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can 
thy silence do for him, except it tempt him—yea, com- 
pel him, as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven 
hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou 
mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within 
thee, and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou 
deniest to him——who, perchance, hath not the courage 
to grasp it for himself—the bitter, but wholesome, cup 
that is now presented to thy lips!’ 


ee ee 


a ee 


THE RECOGNITION 75 


The young pastor’s voice was tremulously sweet, 
rich, deep, and broken. The feeling that is so evidently 
manifested, rather than the direct purport of the words, 
caused it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the 
listeners into one accord of sympathy. Even the poor 
baby, at Hester’s bosom, was affected by the same in- 
fluence ; for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards 
Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms, with a half- 
pleased, half-plaintive murmur. So powerful seemed 
the minister’s appeal that the people could not believe 
but that Hester Prynne would speak out the guilty 
name; or else that the guilty one himself, in whatever 
high or lowly place he stood, would be drawn forth by 
an inward and inevitable necessity, and compelled to 
ascend the scaffold. 

Hester shook her head. 

“Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heav- 
en's mercy!” cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more 
harshly than before. “That little babe hath been gifted 
with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which 
thou hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy 
repentance, may avail to take the scarlet letter off thy 
breast.” 

“Never !’”’ replied Hester Prynne, looking, not at Mr. 
Wilson, but into the deep and troubled eyes of the 
younger clergyman. “It is too deeply branded. Ye 
cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his 
agony, as well as mine!” 

“Speak, woman!” said another voice, coldly and 
sternly, proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold. 
“Speak; and give your child a father!” 

“T will not speak!” answered Hester, turning pale as 


76 PA BuSCARL BIG HIG Ey 


death, but responding to this voice, which she too surely 
recognized. “And my child must seek a heavenly 
Father ; she shall never know an earthly one!” 

“She will not speak!’ murmured Mr. Dimmesdale, 
who, leaning over the balcony, with his hand upon his 
heart, had awaited the result of his appeal. He now 

drew back, with a long respiration. “Wondrous 
- strength and generosity of a woman’s heart! She will 
not speak!” 

Discerning the impracticable state of the poor cul- 
prit’s mind, the elder clergyman, who had carefully pre- 
pared himself for the occasion, addressed to the multi- 
tude a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but with 
continual reference to the ignominious letter. So 
forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or 
more during which his periods were rolling over the 
people’s heads, that it assumed new terrors in their 
imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from 
the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, mean- 
while, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with 
glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference. She had 
borne, that morning, all that nature could endure; and 
as her temperament was not of the order that escapes 
from too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could 
only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, 
while the faculties of animal life remained entire. In 
this state, the voice of the preacher thundered remorse- 
lessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant, 
during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air 
with its wailings and screams; she strove to hush it, 
mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sympathize with 
its trouble. With the same hard demeanor, she was led 


THE RECOGNITION 77 


back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze 
within its iron-clamped portal. It was whispered, by 
those who peered after her that the scarlet letter threw 
a lurid gleam along the dark passage-way of the in- 
terior. 


WV 
THE INTERVIEW 


AFTER her return to the prison, Hester Prynne was 
found to be in a state of nervous excitement that de- 
manded constant watchfulness lest she should perpe- 
trate violence on herself, or do some hali-frenzied mis- 
chief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving 
impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or 
threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer, 
thought fit to introduce a physician. He described him 
as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical 
science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage 
people could teach, in respect to medicinal herbs and 
roots that grew in the forest. To say the truth, there 
was much need of professional assistance, not merely 
for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child; 
who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, 
seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the an- 
guish and despair, which pervaded the mother’s system. 
It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forci- 
ble type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which 
Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day. 

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment 
appeared that individual, of singular aspect, whose 
presence in the crowd had been of such deep interest to 
the wearer of the scarlet letter. He was lodged in the 
prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most 

78 





THE INTERVIEW 79 


convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until 
the magistrates should have conferred with the Indian 
sagamores respecting his ransom. His name was an- 
nounced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after 
ushering him into the room, remained a moment, mar- 
velling at the comparative quiet that followed his en- 
trance; for Hester Prynne had immediately become as 
still as death, although the child continued to moan. 

“Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient,” 
said the practitioner. “Trust me, good jailer, you shall 
briefly have peace in your house; and, I promise you, 
Mistress Prynne shall hereafter be more amenable to 
just authority than you may have found her hereto- 
Loree 

“Nay, if your worship can accomplish that,’ an- 
swered Master Brackett, “I shall own you for a man of 
skill indeed! Verily, the woman hath been like a pos- 
sessed one; and there lacks little, that I should take in 
hand to drive Satan out of her with stripes.” 

The stranger had entered the room with the char- 
acteristic quietude of the profession to which he an- 
nounced himself as belonging. Nor did his demeanor 
change, when the withdrawal of the prison-keeper left 
him face to face with the woman, whose absorbed no- 
tice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close.a rela- 
tion between himself and her. His first care was given 
to the child; whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on 
the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to 
postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. 
He examined the infant carefully, and then proceeded 
to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from beneath 
his dress. It appeared to contain medical preparations, 
one of which he mingled with a cup of water. 


80 LARS CARD EIEE Bat ink 


b 


“My old studies in alchemy,” observed he, “and my 
sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well 
versed in the kindly properties of simples, have made a 
better physician of me than many that claim the medical 
degree. Here, woman! The child is yours,—she is 
none of mine,—neither will she recognize my voice or 
aspect as a father’s. Administer this draught, there- 
fore, with thine own hand.” 

Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same 
time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into his 
face. 

“Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?” 
whispered she. 

“Foolish woman!” responded the physician, half 
coldly, half soothingly... “What should ail me, to harm 
this misbegotten and miserable babe? The medicine is 
potent for good; and were it my child,—yea, mine own, 
as well as thine!-I could do no better for it.” 

As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable 
state of mind, he took the infant in his arms, and him- 
self administered the draught. It soon proved its ef- 
ficacy, and redeemed the leech’s pledge. The moans of 
the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossings grad- 
ually ceased; and, in a few moments, as is the custom 
of young children after relief from pain, it sank into a 
profound and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had 
a fair right to be termed, next bestowed his attention 
on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny, he felt 
her pulse, looked into her eyes,—a gaze that made her 
heart shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet 
so strange and cold,—and, finally, satisfied with his in- 
vestigation, proceeded to mingle another draught. 

“T know not Lethe nor Nepenthe,” remarked he; “but 


PEPEUING BITE MA St 


I have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and 
here is one of them,—a recipe that an Indian taught me, 
in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old 
as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than 
_a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it 
will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil 
thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea.” 

He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with 
a slow, earnest look into his face; not precisely a look 
of fear, yet full of doubt and questioning, as to what 
his purposes might be. She looked also at her slumber- 
ing child. 

“T have thought of death,” said she,—‘“‘have wished 
for it,—would even have prayed for it, were it fit that 
such as I should pray for anything. Yet, if death be 
in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere thou beholdest me 
quaff it. See! It is even now at my lips.” 

“Drink, then,” replied he, still with the same cold 
composure. “Dost thou know me so little, Hester 
Prynne? Are my purposes wont to be so shallow? 
Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I 
do better for my object than to let thee live,—than to 
give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life,— 
so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy 
bosom?” As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on 
the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into 
Hester’s breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed 
her involuntary gesture, and smiled. “Live, therefore, 
and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men 
and women,—in the eyes of him whom thou didst call 
thy husband,—1in the eyes of yonder child! And, that 
thou mayest live, take off this draught.” 

Without further expostulation or delay, Hester 


B2 THEVSCARI EAT Chi Tiek 


Prynne drained the cup, and, at the motion of the man 
of skill, seated herself on the bed where the child was 
sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the room 
afforded, and took his own seat beside her. She could 
not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt that 
—having now done all that humanity, or principle, or, 
if so it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do, for 


the relief of physical suffering—he was next to treat 


with her as the man whom she had most deeply and ir- 
reparably injured. 

“Hester,” said he, “I ask not wherefore, nor how, 
thou hast fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast 
ascended to the pedestal of infamy, on which I found 
thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was my folly, 
and thy weakness. I,—a man of thought,—the book- 





worm of great libraries,—a man already in decay, hav- - 


ing given my best years to feed the hungry dream of 
knowledge,—what had I to do with youth and beauty 
like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how 
could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual 
gifts might veil physical deformity in a younger girl’s 
fantasy! Men call me wise. If sages were ever wise in 


their own behoof, I might have foreseen all this. I - 


might have known that, as I came out of the vast and 
dismal forest, and entered this settlement of Christian 


men, the very first object to meet my eyes would be thy- — 
self, Hester Prynne, standing up, a statue of ignominy, — 


before the people. Nay, from the moment when we — 


came down the old church steps together, a married 
pair, I might have beheld the bale-fire of that scarlet 
letter blazing at the end of our path!” . 


4 


a 
y 
u 


“Thou knowest,” said Hester,—for, depressed as she 4 


was, she could not endure this last quiet stab at the 





THE INTERVIEW 83 


token of her shame,—‘“thou knowest that I was frank 
with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any,’ 

“True,” replied he. “It was my folly! I have said 
it. But, up to that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. 
The world had been so cheerless! My heart was a 
habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely 
and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to 
kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream,—old as I 
was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was,— 
that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and 
wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. 
And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its in- 
nermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the 
warmth which thy presence made there!” 

‘T have greatly wronged thee,’ murmured Hester. 

“We have wronged each other,’ answered he. 
“Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy bud- 
ding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my 
decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and 
philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil 
against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs 
fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has 
wronged us both! Who is he?” 

“Ask me not!” replied Hester Prynne, looking firmly 
into his face. ‘That thou shalt never know!” 

“Never, sayest thou?” rejoined he, with a smile of 
dark and self-relying intelligence. “Never know him! 
Believe me, Hester, there are few things,—whether in 
the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the in- 
visible sphere of thought,—few things hidden from the 
‘man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly 
to the solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover up 
thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest 


84 PAE SOAR PAS R ae els 


conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, even 
as thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the 
name out of thy heart, and give thee a partner on thy 
+ pedestal. But, as for me, I come to the inquest with 
other senses than they possess. I shall seek this man, 
as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold 
in alchemy. ‘There is a sympathy that will make me 
conscious of him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel 
myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. Sooner or 
later, he must needs be mine!” 

The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely 
upon her, that Hester Prynne clasped her hands over 
her heart, dreading lest he should read the secret there 
at once. 

“Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is 
mine,’ resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if 
destiny were at one with him. “He bears no letter of 
infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost; but I 
shall read it on his heart. Yet fear not for him! Think 
not that I shall interfere with Heaven’s own method of 
retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him to the gripe 
of human law. Neither do thou imagine that I shall 
contrive aught against his life; no, nor against his fame, 
if, as I judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him 
live! Let him hide himself in outward honor, if he 
may! Not the less he shall be mine!” 

“Thy acts are like mercy,” said Hester, bewildered 
and appalled. “But thy words interpret thee as a 
terror!” 

“One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin 
upon thee,” continued the scholar. “Thou hast kept 


‘ 
ia 


the secret of thy paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! — 
There are none in this land that know me. Breathe not, 





ee ee ae ee in, ee - 


—— ..ore 


THE INTERVIEW 85 


to any human soul, that thou didst ever call me hus- 
band! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shall 
pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated 
from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a 
child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest 
ligaments. No matter whether of love or hate; no mat- 
ter whether of right or wrong! Thou and thine, Hes- 
ter Prynne, belong to me. My home ts where thou art, 
and where he is. But betray me not!” 

“Wherefore dost thou desire it?’ inquired Hester, 
shrinking, she hardly knew why, from this secret bond. 
“Why not announce thyself openly, and cast me off at 
once ?”’ 

“Tt may be,” he replied, “because I will not encounter 
the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faith- 
less woman. It may be for other reasons. Enough, it 
is my purpose to live and die unknown. Let, therefore, 
thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and 
of whom no tidings shall ever come. Recognize me 
not, by word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret, 
above all, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou 
fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, his 
life, will be in my hands. Beware!” 

“T will keep thy secret, as I have this,’ 

“Swear it!’ rejoined he. 

And she took the oath. 

“And now, Mistress Prynne,” said old Roger Chil- 
lingworth, as he was hereafter to be named, “I leave 
thee alone; alone with thy infant, and the scarlet letter! 
How is it, Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee to 
wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of 
nightmares and hideous dreams ?”’ 

“Why dost thou smile so at me?” inquired Hester, 


) 


said Hester. 


86 LL Fe oS © AR EP DET TEE 


troubled at the expression of his eyes. “Art thou like 
the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? 
Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the 
ruin of my soul?” 

“Not thy soul,” he answered, with another smile. — 
“No, not thine!’ 


. 
HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 


HeEsTER PryNnNeE’s term of confinement was now at 
an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she 
came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, 
seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for 
no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her 
breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her 
first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the 
prison, than even in the procession and spectacle that 
have been described, where she was made the common 
infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point 
its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural 
tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy 
of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene 
into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a sepa- 
rate and insulated event, to occur but once in her life- 
time, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, 
she might call up the vital strength that would have 
sufficed for many quiet years. The very law that con- 
_demned her—a giant of stern features, but with vigot 
_to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm— 
had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her 
ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from 
_her prison-door, began the daily custom; and she must 
either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary re- 


sources of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no 
| Sr 


88 Foes) Ops lia by ad Pvilia EIN a ics 


longer borrow from the future to help her through the 
present grief. To-morrow would bring its own trial 
with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; 
each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now 
so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the | 
far-off future would toil onward, still with the same 
burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but 
never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and 
added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap 
vf shame. Throughout them all, giving up her in- 
dividuality, she would become the general symbol at 
which the preacher and moralist might point, and in 
which they might vivify and embody their images of 
woman’s frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young 
and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet 
letter flaming on her breast,—at her, the child of hon- 
orable parents,—at her, the mother of a babe, that 
would hereafter be a woman,—at her, who had once 
been innocent,—as the figure, the body, the reality of 
sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must 
carry thither would be her only monument. 

It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before 
her,—kept by no restrictive clause of her condemna- 
tion within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so re- 
mote and so obscure,—free to return to her birthplace, 
or to any other European land, and there hide her char-~ 
acter and identity under a new exterior, as completely 
as if emerging into another state of being,—and having 
also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to 
her, where the wildness of her nature might assimi- 
late itself with a people whose customs and life were 
alien from the law that had condemned her,—it may 
seem marvellous that this woman should still call that — 


HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 89 


place her home, where, and where only, she must needs 
be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling 
so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of 
doom, which almost invariably compels human beings 
to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where 
some great and marked event has given the color to 
their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker 
the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were 
the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as 
if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the 
first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial 
to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester 
Prynne’s wild and dreary, but life-long home. All other 
scenes of earth—even that village of rural England, 
where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed 
yet to be in her mother’s keeping, like garments put off 
long ago—were foreign to her, in comparison. The 
chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling 
to her inmost soul, but could never be broken. 

It might be, too,—doubtless it was so, although she 
hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it 
struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole, 
—it might be that another feeling kept her within the 
scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, 
there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed her- 
self connected in a union, that, unrecognized on earth, 
would bring them together before the bar of final judg- 
ment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint 
futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again, 
the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Hester’s 
contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and des- 
perate joy with which she seized, and then strove to 
cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the ~ 


go PHEVSCARLE TWEET) Tish 


face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she 
compelled herself to believe—what, finally, she rea- 
soned upon, as her motive for continuing a resident of 
New England—was half a truth, and half a seif-delu- 


sion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of © 


her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly 
punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily 
shame would at length purge her soul, and work out 
another purity than that which she had lost; more saint- 
like, because the result of martyrdom. 

Hester Prynne, therefore, did not flee. On the out- 


skirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, © 


but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there 
was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an 
earlier settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it 
was too sterile .for cultivation, while its comparative re- 
moteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity 
which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It 
stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea 
at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump 
of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, 
did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem 
to denote that here was some object which would fain 
have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. In this 
little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that 
she possessed, and by the license of the magistrates, 
who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester 
established herself, with her infant child. A mystic 
shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the 
spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore 
this woman should be shut out from the sphere of hu- 
man charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her 


plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing 








Hes pe nh ra eR ONE EDL g! 


at the doorway, or laboring in her little garden, or com- 
ing forth along the pathway that led townward; and 
discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scam- 
per off with a strange, contagious fear. 

Lonely as was Hester’s situation, and without a 
friend on earth who dared to show himself, she, how- 
ever, incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art 
that sufficed, even in a land that afforded compara- 
tively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for 
her thriving infant and herself. It was the art—then, 
as now, almost the only one within a woman’s grasp—: 
of needlework. She bore on her breast, in the curt 
ously embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate 
and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court 
might gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer 
and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to 
their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed, in the 
sable simplicity that generally characterized the Purt- 
tanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call 
for the finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the 
taste of the age, demanding whatever was elaborate 
in compositions of this kind, did not fail to extend its 
influence over our stern progenitors who had cast be- 
hind them so many fashions which it might seem 
harder to dispense with. Public ceremonies, such as 
ordinations, the installation of magistrates, and all 
that could give majesty to the forms in which a new 
government manifested itself to the people, were, as 
a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-con- 
ducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied 
magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands, 
and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed 
necessary to the official state of men assuming the 





92 THE SCARLET LETTER 


reins of power; and were readily allowed to individu- 
als dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary 
laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the 
plebeian order. In the array of funerals, too.—whether 
for the apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by 
manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth and snowy 
lawn, the sorrow of the survivors,—there was a fre- 
quent and characteristic demand for such labor as 
Hester Prynne could supply. Baby-linen—for babies 
then wore robes of state—afforded still another possi- 
bility of toil and emolument. 

By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became ~ 
what would now be termed the fashion. Whether © 
from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a 
destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a 
fictitious value even to common or worthless things; 
or by whatever other intangible circumstance was 
then, as now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, 
what others might seek in vain; or because Hester 
really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained 
vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly re- 
quited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to 
occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to 
mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp 
and state, the garments that had been wrought by her 
sinful hands. Her needlework was seen on the ruff of 
the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, 
and the minister on his band; it decked the baby’s little 
cap; it was shut up to be mildewed and moulder away, 
in the coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that, — 
in a single instance, her skill was called in aid to em- — 
broider the white veil which was to cover the pure 
blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the ever- 





HESTER ATHERNEEDLE _g3 


relentless rigor with which society frowned upon her 
sin. 

Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond a4 
stibsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic descrip- 
tion, for herself, and a simple abundance for her child, 
Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the 
most sombre hue; with only that one ornament,—the 
scarlet letter.—which it was her doom to wear. The 
child’s attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by 
a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic inge- 
nuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm 
that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but 
which appeared to have also a deeper. meaning. We 
may speak further of it hereafter. Except for that 
small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hes- 
ter bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on 
wretches less miserable than herself, and who not un- 
frequently insulted the hand that fed them. Much of 
the time, which she might readily have applied to the 
better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse 

garments for the poor. It is probable that there was 
-an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and 
that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment, in 
devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She 
had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental charac: . 
teristic,—a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, 
save in the exquisite productions of her needle, found 
nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exer- 
cise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, incompre- 
hensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the 
needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode 
of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of 
her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. 


94 THE SCA RICE il el eas 


This morbid meddling of conscience with an immate- 
rial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine 
and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, some- 
thing that might be deeply wrong, beneath. 

In this manner, Hester Prynne came to have a part 
to perform in the world. With her native energy of 
character, and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast 
her off, although it had set a mark upon her, more in- 
tolerable to a woman’s heart than that which branded 
the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse with society, 
however, there was nothing that made her feel as 1f 
she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and 
even the silence of those with whom she came in con- 
tact, implied, and often expressed, that she was ban- 
ished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another 
sphere, or communicated with the common nature by 
other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. 
She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside 
them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, 
and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more 
smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kin- 
dred sorrow; or, should it succeed in manifesting its 
forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and hor- 
rible repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its 
bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion 
that she retained in the universal heart. It was not 
an age of delicacy; and her position, although she un- 
derstood it well, and was in little danger of forget- 
ting it, was often brought before her vivid self-percep- 
tion, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the 
tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, 
whom she sought out to be the objects of her bounty, 
often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to suc- 








(BHOS TIETES GUE del olga ay og BB LA a) 95 


eor them. Dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose 
doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were 
accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; 
sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by 
which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordi- 
nary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expres- 
sion, that fell upon the sufferer’s defenceless breast 
like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. Hester 
had schooled herself long and well; she never re- 
sponded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson 
that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again 
subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was pa- 
tient,—a martyr, indeed,—but she forbore to pray 
for her enemies; lest, in spite of her forgiving aspi- 
rations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly 
twist themselves into a curse. 

Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she 
feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been 
so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the 
ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergy- 
men paused in the street to address words of exhorta- 
tion, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and 
frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If she entered 
a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the 
Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find her- 
self the text of the discourse. She grew to have a 
dread of children; for they had imbibed fram their 
parents a vague idea of something horrible in this 
dreary woman, gliding silently through the town, with 
never any companion but one only child. There fore, 
first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a dis- 
tance with shrill cries, and the utterance of a word 
that had no distinct purport to their own minds, but 


96 THE SCARLE DARED RE 


“was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from 
lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue 
so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew 
of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang, had the 
leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among 
themselves,—had the summer breeze murmured about 
it,—had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another 
peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. 
When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter,— 
and none ever failed to do so,—they branded it afresh 
into Hester’s soul; so that oftentimes, she could 
scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering 
the symbol with her hand. But then, again, an accus- 
tomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its 
cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to 
last, in short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful 
agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot 
never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow 
more sensitive with daily torture. 

But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in 
many months, she felt an eye—a human eye—upon 
the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momen- 
tary relief, as if half of her agony were shared. The 
next instant, back it all rushed again, with still a 
deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she 
had sinned anew. Had Hester sinned alone? 

Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had 
she been of a soiter moral and intellectual fibre, would 
have been still more so, by the strange and solitary 
anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with those 
lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was 
outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Hes- 
ter,—if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too po- 


HESTER AT HER NEEDLE Sy 


tent to be resisted,—she felt or fancied, then, that 
the scarlet letter had endowed her with a new sense. 
She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, 
that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden 
sin in other hearts. She was terror-stricken by the 
revelations that were thus made. What were they? 
Could they be other than the insidious whispers of 
the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the 
struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the 
outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if 
truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter 
would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester 
Prynne’s? Or, must she receive those intimations— 
so obscure, yet so distinct—as truth? In all her miser- 
able experience, there was nothing else so awful and 
so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as 
shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the 
occasions that brought it into vivid action. Some- 
times the red infamy upon her breast would give a 
sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable min- 
ister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, 
to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as 
to a mortal man in fellowship with angels. “What 
evil thing is at hand?’ would Hester say to herself. 
Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing hu- 
man within the scope of view, save the form of this 
earthly saint! Again, a mystic sisterhood would con- 
tumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified 
frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor 
of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom 
throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron’s 
bosom, and the burning shame on Hester Prynne’s,— 
what had the two in common? Qr, once more, the 


98 NV es MN DY. 5 HS ty ahd bo BN ERS AS RS EN a 


electric thrill would give her warning,—‘‘Behold, Hes- 
ter, here is a companion!’’—and, looking up, she would 
detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the 
scarlet letter, shyly and aside, and quickly averted with 
a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks; as if her purity 
were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O 
Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst 
thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this 
poor sinner to revere’—such loss of faith is ever one 
of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof 
that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own 
frailty, and man’s hard law, that Hester Prynne yet 
struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty 
like herself. 

The vulgar, who, in.those dreary old times, were al- 
ways contributing a grotesque horror to what inter- 
ested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet 
letter which we might readily work up into a terrific 
legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere 
scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red- 
hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all 
alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the 
night-time. And we must needs say, it seared Hes- 
ter’s bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more 
truth in the rumor than our modern incredulity may 
be inclined to admit. 


VI 
PEARL 


WE have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that 
little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the 
inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immor- 
tal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty pas- 
sion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, ag 
she watched the growth, and the beauty that became 
every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that 
threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of 
this child! Her Pearl!—For so had Hester called her; 
not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had 
nothing of the calm, white unimpassioned lustre that 
would be indicated by the comparison. But she named 
the infant “Pearl,” as being of great price,—purchased 
with all she had,—her mother’s only treasure! How 
strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman’s sin 
by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disas- 
trous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, 
save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct con- 
sequence of the sin which man thus punished, had 
given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same 
dishonored bosom, to connect her parent for ever with 
the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a 
dlessed soul in heaven!. Yet these thoughts affected 
Hester Prynne less with hope than apprehension. She 
knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no 

99 


100 DHE SOARLE TLE Tel iak. 


faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Day 
after day, she looked fearfully into the child’s expand- 
ing nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and 
wild peculiarity, that should correspond with the 
guiltiness to which she owed her being. 

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its per- 
fect shape, its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the 
use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to 
nave been brought forth in Eden; worthy to have been 
left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the 
world’s first parents were driven out. The child had 
a native grace which does not invariably coexist with 
faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always im- 
pressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that 
precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad 
in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose, 
that may be better understood hereafter, had bought 
the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed 
her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrange- 
ment and decoration of the dresses which the child 
wore, before the public eye. So magnificent was the 
small figure, when thus arrayed, and such was the 
splendor of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining through 
the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a 
paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of 
radiance around her, on the darksome cottage floor. 
And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child’s 
rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl’s 
aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in 
this one child there were many children, comprehend- 
ing the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness 
of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant 
princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait 





BEAREL Ior 


of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never 
lost; and if, in any of her changes, she had grown 
fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself,—~ 
it would have been no longer Pearl. 

- This outward mutability indicated, and did not more 
than fairly express, the various properties. of her inner 
life. Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as 
well as variety; but—or else Hester’s fears deceived 
her—it lacked reference and adaptation to the world 
into which she was born. The child could not be made 
amenable to rules. In giving her existence, a great 
law had been broken; and the result was a being whose 
elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all 
in disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves, 
amidst which the point of variety and arrangement 
was difficult or impossible to be discovered. Hester 
could only account for the child’s character—and even 
then most vaguely and imperfectly—by recalling what 
she herself had been, during that momentous period 
while Pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual 
world, and her bodily frame from its material of earth. 
The mother’s impassioned state had been the medium 
through which were transmitted to the unborn infant 
the rays of its moral life; and, however white and 
clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crim- 
son and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the 
untempered light of the intervening substance. Above 
all, the warfare of Hester’s spirit, at that epoch, was 
perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognize her wild, 
desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, 
and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and 
despondency that had brooded in her heart. They 
were now illuminated by the morning radiance of 4 


102 DM ber CARE a Ee rads 


young child’s disposition, but later in the day of earthly 
existence might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind. 
The discipline of the family, in those days, was of 

a far more rigid kind than now. The frown, the harsh 
rebuke, the frequent application of the rod, enjoined 
by Scriptural authority, were used, not merely in the 
way of punishment for actual offences, but as a whole- 
some regimen for the growth and promotion of all 
childish virtues. Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the 
lonely mother of this one child, ran little risk of erring 
on the side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of 
‘her own errors and misfortunes, she early sought to 
impose a tender, but strict control over the infant im- 
mortality that was committed to her charge. But the 
task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles 
and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treat- 
ment possessed any calculable influence, Hester was 
ultimately compelled to stand aside, and permit the 
child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physical 
compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while 
it lasted. As to any other kind of discipline, whether 
addressed to her mind or heart, little Pearl might or 
might not be within its reach, in accordance with the 
caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while 
Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a cer- 
tain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be 
Jlabor thrown away to insist, persuade, or plead. It 
was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, 
sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by 
a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help ques- 
tioning, at such moments, whether Pearl were a human 
child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after 
playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the 


a ee 


— 


, 
| 





PEARL 103 


cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. 
Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, 
deeply-black eyes, it invested her with a strange re- 
moteness and intangibility; it was as if she were hover- 
ing in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering light 
that comes we know not whence, and goes we know 
not whither. Beholding it, Hester was constrained to 
rush towards the child,—to pursue the little elf in the 
flight which she invariably began,—to snatch her to 
her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses,— 
not so much from overflowing love, as to assure her- 
self that Pearl was flesh and blood, and not utterly de- 
lusive. But Pearl’s laugh, when she was caught, 
though full of merriment and music, made her mother 
more doubtful than before. 

Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, 
that so often came between herself and her sole treas- 
ure, whom she had bought so dear, and who was all 
her world, Hester sometimes burst into passionate 
tears. Then, perhaps,—for there was no foreseeing 
how it might affect her,—Pearl would frown, and 
clench her little fist, and harden her small features into 
a stern, unsympathizing look of discontent. Not sel- 
dom, she would laugh anew, and louder than before, 
like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sor- 
row. Or—but this more rarely happened—she would 
be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob out her 
love for her mother in broken words, and seem intent 
on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet 
Hester was hardly safe in confiding herself to that 
gusty tenderness; it passed as suddenly as it came. 
Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like 
one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity 


£04 THE SCARLERSLETITER 


in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the © 


master-word that should control this new and incom- 


prehensible intelligence. Her only real comfort was — 
when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she — 
was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, delicious — 
happiness; until—perhaps with that perverse expres- — 


sion glimmering from beneath her opening lids—tittle 
Pearl awoke! 3 

How soon—with what strange rapidity, indeed !— 
did Pearl arrive at an age that was capable of social 
intercourse, beyond the mother’s ever-ready smile and 
nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would it 
have been could Hester Prynne have heard her clear, 
bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other child- 
ish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her 
own darling’s tones, amid all the entangled outcry of 
a group of sportive children! But this could never 
be. Pearl was a born outcast of the infantile world. 
An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had 
no right among christened infants. Nothing was more 
remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which 
the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that 
had drawn an inviolable circle round about her; the 
whole peculiarity, in short, of her position in respect 
to other children. Never, since her release from prison, 
had Hester met the public gaze without her. In all her 
walks about.the town, Pearl, too, was there; first as 
the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small 
companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with 
her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three 
or four footsteps to one of Hester’s. She saw the 
children of the settlement, on the grassy margin of 
the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting 





FRARL | Los 


themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nur- 
ture would permit; playing at going to church, per- 
chance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in 
a sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring one another 
with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Pearl saw, and 
gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. 
If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the chil- 
dren gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl 
would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, 
snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, inco- 
herent exclamations, that made her mother tremble be- 
cause they had so much the sound of a witch’s anathe- 
mas in some unknown tongue. 

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the 
most intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague 
idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance 
with ordinary fashions, in the mother and child; and 
therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfre- 
quently reviled them with their tongues. Pearl felt 
the sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred 
that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. 
These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of 
value, and even comfort, for her mother; because there 
was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, in- 
stead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in 
the child’s manifestations. It appalled her, neverthe: 
less, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the 
evil that had existed in herself. All this enmity and 
passion had Pearl inherited, by inalienable right, out 
of Hester’s heart. Mother and daughter stood to- 
gether in the same circle of seclusion from human so- 
ciety; and in the nature of the child seemed to be per- 
petuated those unquiet elements that had distracted 


106 LITEM SCAR LE Ena Elon i 


Hester Prynne before Pearl’s birth, but had since be- 
gun to be soothed away by the softening influences of 
maternity. 

At home, within and around her mother’s cottage, 
Pearl wanted not a wide and various circle of ac- 
quaintance. The spell of life went forth from her 
ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thou- 
sand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it 
may be applied. The unlikeliest materials—a stick, 
a bunch of rags, a flower—were the puppets, of Pearl’s 
witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward 
change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama 
occupied the stage of her inner world. Her one baby- 
voice served a multitude of imaginary personages, old 
and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged, black, 
and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy 
utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation 
to figure as Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the 
garden were their children, whom Pearl smote down 
and uprooted, most unmercifully. It was wonderful, 
the vast variety of forms into which she threw her 
intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up 
and dancing, always in a state of preternatural activity, 
—soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and 
feverish a tide of life,—and succeeded by other shapes 
of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much 
as the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In 
the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and the 
sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be little 
more than was observable in other children of bright 
faculties; except as Pearl, in the dearth of human play- 
mates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng 
which she created. The singularity lay in the hostile 





PEARL 107 


feelings with which the child regarded all these off- 
spring of her own heart and mind. She never created 
a friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast 
the dragon's teeth, whence sprung a harvest of armed 
enemies, against whom she rushed to battle. It was 
inexpressibly sad—then what depth of sorrow to a 
mother, who felt in her own heart the cause !—to ob- 
serve, in one so young, this constant recognition of an 
adverse world, and so fierce a training of the energies 
that were to make good her cause in the contest that 
must ensue. 

Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her 
work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony 
which she would fain have hidden, but which made ut- 
terance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan,—‘‘O 
Father in Heaven,—if Thou art still my Father,— 
what is this being which I have brought into the 
world!’ And Pearl, overhearing the ejaculation, or 
aware, through some more subtile channel, of those 
throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful 
little face upon her mother, smile with sprite- -like in- 
telligence, and resume her play. 

One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains 
yet to be told. The very first thing which she had -: 
noticed in her life was—what?—not the mother’s 
smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that 
faint, embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered 
so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discus- 
_sion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means! 
But that first object of which Pearl seemed to be- 
come aware was—shall we say it?—the scarlet letter 
on Hester’s bosom! One day, as her mother stooped. 
over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been caught by 


108 THEY SCARE TER TT Ein 


the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the let- 
ter; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at 
it, smiling not doubtfully,.but with a decided gleam, 
that gave her face the look of a much older child. 
Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch 
the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it 
away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the in- 
telligent touch of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, as if her 
mother’s agonized gesture were meant only to make 
sport for her, did little Pearl look into her eyes, and 
smile! From that epoch, except when the child was 
asleep, Hester had never felt a moment’s safety; not 
a moment’s calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, 
would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze 
might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but 
then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke 
of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile, 
and odd expression of the eyes. 

Once, this freakish, elfish cast came into the child’s 
eyes, while Hester was looking at her own image in 
them, as mothers are fond of doing; and, suddenly,— 
for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are 
pestered with unaccountable delusions,—she fancied 
that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but 
another face, in the small black mirror of Pearl’s eye. 
It was a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet 
bearing the semblance of features that she had known 
full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with 
malice in them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed | 
the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery. 
Many a time afterwards had Hester been tortured, 
though less vividly, by the same illusion. 

In the afternoon of a certain summer’s day, after 





PEARL 10g 


Pearl grew big enough to run about, she amused her- 
self with gathering handfuls of wild-flowers, and fling» 
ing them, one by one, at her mother’s bosom; dancing 
up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit the 
scarlet letter. Hester’s first motion had been to cover 
her bosom with her clasped hands. But, whether from ” 
pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance 
might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain, 
she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, 
looking sadly into little Pearl’s wild eyes.* Still came 
the battery of flowers, almost invariably hitting the 
mark, covering the mother’s breast with hurts for 
which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew 
how to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all 
expended, the child stood still and gazed at Hester, > 
with that little, laughing image of a fiend peeping out 
—or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined 
it—from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes. 

“Child, what art thou?” cried the mother. 

“Oh, I am your little Pearl!’ answered the child. 

But, while she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to 
dance up and down, with the humorsome gesticulation 
of a little imp, whose next freak might be to fly up 
the chimney. 

“Art thou my child, in very truth?” asked Hester. 

Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, 
for the moment, with a portion of genuine earnest: 
ness; for, such was Pearl’s wonderful intelligence, that 
her mother half doubted whether she were not ac- 
quainted with the secret spell of her existence, and 
might not now reveal herself. 

“Yes; I am little Pearl!’ repeated the child, con 
tinuing her antics. 


x10 TESS hie Oar: 


“Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of 
mine!” said the mother, half playfully; for it was 
often the case that a sportive impulse came over her, 
dn the midst of her deepest suffering. ‘Tell me, then, 
what thou art, and who sent thee hither.” 

“Tell me, mother!” said the child, seriously, com- 
ing up to Hester, and pressing herself close to her 
knees. “Do thou tell me!” 

“Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!’ answered Hes- 
ter Prynne. 

But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape 
the acuteness of the child. Whether moved only by 
her ordinary freakishness, or because an evil spirit 
prompted her, she put up her small forefinger, and 
touched the scarlet letter. 

“He. did not send me!” cried she, positively. “I 
have no Heavenly Father!” 

“Hush, Pearl, hush! Thou must not talk sod’ san= 
swered the mother, suppressing a groan. “He sent 
us all into this world. He sent even me, thy mother. 
Then, much more, thee! Or, 1f not, thou strange and 
elfish child, whence didst thou come?” 


“Tell me! Tell me!” repeated Pearl, no longer se- @ 


riously, but laughing, and capering about the floor. 
“Tt is thou that must tell me!” 

But Hester could not resolve the query, being herself 
in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered— 
betwixt a smile and a shudder—the talk of the neigh- 
boring townspeople; who, seeking vainly elsewhere for 
the child’s paternity, and observing some of her odd 
attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a 
demon offspring; such as, ever since old Catholic 


times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through | 





PEARL III 


the agency of their mother’s sin, and to promote some 
foul and wicked purpose. Luther, according to the 
scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that 
hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child to whom 
this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the New 
England Puritans. 


Vit 
THE GOVERNOR’S HALL 


HeEsTER PRYNNE went, one day, to the mansion of 
Governor Bellingham, with a pair of gloves, which 
she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and 
which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; 
for, though the chances of a popular election had 
caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from 
the highest rank, he still held an honorable and influ- 
ential place among the colonial magistracy. 

Another and far more important reason than the de~- 
livery of a pair of embroidered gloves impelled Hester, 
at this time, to seek an interview with a personage of 
so much power and activity in the affairs of the settle< 
ment. It had reached her ears, that there was a de-~ 
sign on the part of some of the leading inhabitants, 
cherishing the more rigid order of principles in re- 
ligion and government, to deprive her of her child, 
On the supposition that Pearl, as already hinted, was 
of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably 
argued that a Christian interest in the mother’s soul 
required them to remove such a stumbling-block from 
her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really 
capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed 
the elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it 
would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages 


by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship 
1i2 


THE GOVERNOR’S HALL 113 


than Hester Prynne’s. Among those who promoted 
the design, Governor Bellingham was said to be one 
of the most busy. It may appear singular, and indeed 
not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which, 
in later days, would have been referred to no higher 
jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, 
should then have been a question publicly discussed, 
and on which statesmen of eminence took sides. At 
that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of 
even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic 
weight, than the welfare of Hester and her child, were 
strangely mixed up with the deliberations of legisla- 
tors and acts of state. The period was hardly, if at 
all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute con- 
cerning the right of property in a pig not only caused 
a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of 
the colony, but resulted in an important modification 
of the framework itself of the legislature. 

Full of concern, therefore,—but so conscious of her 
own right that it seemed scarcely an unequal match 
between tine public, on the one side, and a lonely 
woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the 
other,— Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary cot- 
tage. Little Pearl, of course, was her companion. 
She was now of an age to run lightly along by her 
mother’s side, and, constantly in motion, from morn 
till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer 
journey than that before her. Often, nevertheless, 
more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to be 
taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to be set 
down again, and frisked onward before Hester on the 
grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tum- 
ble. We have spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant 


§ 


I14 THEN SOAR EY Bd ea 


beauty; a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints; 
a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of 
depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy 
brown, and which, in after years, would be nearly akin 
to black. There-was fire in her and throughout her; 
she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passion- 
ate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child’s 
garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her im- 
agination their full play; arraying her in a crimson vel- 
vet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered 
with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So much 
strength of coloring, which must have given a wan 
and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was 
admirably adapted to Pearl’s beauty, and made her the 
very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon 
the earth. 

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and, 
indeed, of the child’s whole appearance, that it irresist- 
ibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token 
which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her 
bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form; the 
scarlet letter endowed with life! The mother herself 
—as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into 
her brain that all her conceptions assumed its form— 
had carefully wrought out the similitude; lavishing 
many hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy 
between the object of her affection and the emblem of 
her: guilt and torture. ‘But, in truth,’ Pearl was ste 
one, as well as the other; and only in consequence of 
that identity had Hester contrived so perfectly to rep- 
resent the scarlet letter in her appearance. 

As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of 
the town, the children of the Puritans. looked up from 


RHE (GOVERNORS HALL IIs 


their play—or what passed for play with those som- 
bre little urchins,—and spake gravely one to another :— 

“Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet 
letter; and, of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness 
of the scarlet letter running along by her side! Come, 
therefore, and let us fling mud at them!’ 

But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frown- 
ing, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand 
with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made 
a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all ta 
flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, 
an infant pestilence,—the scarlet fever, or some such 
half-fledged angel of judgment,—whose mission was 
to punish the sins of the rising generation. She 
screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of 
sound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the fu- 
gitives to quake within them. The victory accom- 
plished, Pearl returned quietly to her mother, and 
looked up, smiling, into her face. 

Without further adventure, they reached the dwell- 
ing of Governor Bellingham. This was a large wooden 
house, built in a fashion of which there are speci- 
mens still extant in the streets of our older towns: 
now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy 
at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, 
remembered or forgotten, that have happened, and 
passed away, within their dusky chambers. Then, 
however, there was the freshness of the passing year 
on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth 
from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, mto 
which death had never entered. It had, indeed, a 
very cheery aspect; the walls being overspread with a 


all 


116 “THE SCARLET LETTER 


kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass 
were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sun- 
shine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it 
glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung 
against it by the double handful. The brilliancy 
might have befitted Aladdin’s palace, rather than the 
mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further 
decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures 
and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age, 
which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid 
on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the ad- 
iration of after times. 

Pearl, looking at this bright wonder of a house, be- 
gan to caper and dance, and imperatively required that 
the whole breadth of sunshine should be stripped off 
its front, and given her to play with. 

“No, my ‘little’ Pearl!’ said her) mothers#) 5 non 
must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give 
theed: 

They approached the door; which was of an arched 
form, and flanked on each side by a narrow tower or 
projection of the edifice, in both of which were lattice- 
windows, with wooden shutters to close over them at 
need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the por- 
tal, Hester Prynne gave a summons, which was an- 
swered by one of the Governor’s bond-servants; a 
free-born Englishman, but now a seven years’ slave. 
During that term he was to be the property of his 
master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale 
as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf wore the blue 
coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men of 
that period, and long before, in the old hereditary 
halls of England. 


THE GOVERNOR’S HALL 117 


“Ts the worshipful Governor Bellingham within?” 
inquired Hester. 

“Yea, forsooth,” replied the bond-servant, ont 
with wide-open eyes at the scarlet letter, which, being 
a new-comer in the country, he had never before seen. 
“Yea, his honorable worship is within. But he hath 
a godly minister or two with him, and likewise 4 
leech. Ye may not see his worship now.” 

“Nevertheless, I will enter,’ replied Hester Prynne, 
and the bond-servant, perhavs, judging from the de- 
cision of her air, and the glittering symbol in her 
bosom, that she was a great lady in the land, offered 
no opposition. 

So the mother and little Pearl were admitted into 
the hall of entrance. With many variations, sug: 
gested by the nature of his building-materials, diver- 
sity of climate, and a different mode of social life, 
Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation 
after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his 
native land. -Here, then, was a wide and reasonably 
lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the 
house, and forming a medium of general communica- 
tion, more or less directly, with all the other apart- 
ments. At one extremity, this spacious room was 
lighted by the windows of the two towers, which 
formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At 
the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it 
was more powerfully illuminated by one of those em- 
bowed hall-windows which we read of in old books, 
and which was provided with a deep and cushioned 
seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably 
of the Chronicles of England, or other such substan- 
tial literature; even_as, in our own days, we scatte? 


118 THES OCARL EIN dB ei 


gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be turned over 
by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall con- 
sisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which 
were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flow- 
ers; and likewise a table in the same taste; the whole 
being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and 
heirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor’s pa- 
ternal home. » On the table—in token that the senti- 
ment of old English hospitality had not been left be- 
hind—stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of 
which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might 
have seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught of 
ale. 

On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing 
the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, some with 
armor on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs 
and robes of peace. All were characterized by the 
sternnéss and severity which old portraits so invariably 
put on; as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pic- 
tures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with 
harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and en- 
joyments of living men. 

At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined 
the hall, was suspended a suit of mail; not, like the 
pictures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern 
date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful ar- 
morer in London, the same year in which Governor 
Bellingham came over to New England. There was 
a steel headpiece, a cuirass, a gorget, and greaves, with 
a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, 
and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly 
burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter 
an illumination everywhere about upon the floor. This 


THE GOVERNOR’S HALL 119 


bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but 
had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn 
muster and training field, and had glittered, more- 
over, at the head of a regiment in the Pequod war. 
For, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak 
of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch as his professional 
associates, the exigencies of this new country had 
transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier as 
well as a statesman and ruler. 

Little Pearl—who was as greatly pleased with the 
gleaming armor as she had been with the glittering 
frontispiece of the house—spent some time looking 
into the polished mirror of the breastplate. 

wiViother) “cried she; \ l’see you here, “ook! ook; 

“lester looked, by way of humoring the child; and 
she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this con- 
vex mirror, the scarlet letter was represented in exag- 
gerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly 
the most prominent feature of her appearance. In 
truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Pearl 
pointed upward, also, at a similar picture in the head- 
piece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelli- 
gence that was so familiar an expression on her small 
physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was 
likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth 
and intensity of effect, that it made Hester Prynne 
feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, 
but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into 
Rear ysesnape sti’ 

“Come along, Pearl,” said she, drawing her away. 
“Come and look into this fair garden. It may be we 
shall see flowers there; more beautiful ones than we 
find in the woods.” 


9 


120 CA EV SCAR ERI Nee Jie re 


Pearl, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the 
farther end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a 
garden-walk, carpeted with closely shaven grass, and 
bordered with some rude and immature attempt at 
shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to 
have relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate 
on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid 
the close struggle for subsistence, the native English 
taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in 
plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some dis- 
tance, had run across the intervening space, and de- 


posited one of its gigantic products directly beneath 


the hall-window; as if to warn the Governor that this 
great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament 
as New England earth would offer him. There were 
a few rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple- 
trees, probably the descendants of those planted by 
the Reverend Mr. Blackstone, the first settler of the 
peninsula; that half-mythological personage, who rides 
through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull. 

Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red 
rose, and would not be pacified. 

“Hush, child, hush!” said her mother, earnestly. 
“Do not cry, dear little Pearl! I.hear voices in the 
garden. The Governor is coming, and gentlemen 
along with him!” 

In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a num- 
ber of persons were seen approaching towards the 
house. Pearl, in utter scorn of her mother’s attempt 
to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then became 
silent; not from any notion of obedience, but because 
the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was 
excited by the appearance of these new personages. 








VITl 
THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 


GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM, in a loose gown and easy 
cap,—such as elderly gentlemen loved to endue them. 
selves with, in their domestic privacy,—walked fore- 
most, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and 
expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide 
circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray 
beard, in the antiquated fashion of King James’s 
reign, caused his head to look not a little like that of 
John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made 
by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten 
with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping 
with the appliances of worldly enitoyment wherewith 
he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. 
But it is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers 
—though accustomed to speak and think of human 
existence as a state merely of trial and warfare, and 
though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and 
life at the behest of duty—made it a matter of con- 
science to reject such means of comfort, or even lux- 
ury, as lay fairly within their grasp. This creed was 
never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor, 
John Wilson, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was 
seen over Governor Bellingham’s shoulder; while its 
wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be 


naturalized in the New England climate, and that pur- 
| 121 


122 RES SCARLET PLEAD ike 


ple grapes might possibly be compelled to flourish, 
against the sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, 
nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church, 
had a long-established and legitimate taste for all good 
and comfortable things; and however stern he might 
show himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of 
such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still, the 
genial benevolence of his private life had won him 
warmer affection than was accorded to any of his pro- 
fessional contemporaries. 

Behind the Governor and Mr. Wilson came two 
other guests: one the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, 
whom the reader may remember as having taken a 
brief and reluctant part in the scene of Hester Prynne’s 
disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old 
Roger Chillingworth, a person of great skill in physic, 
who, for two or three years past, had been settled in 
the town. It was understood that this learned man 
was the physician as well as friend of the young min- 
ister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by 
his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and du- 
ties of the pastoral relation. 

The Governor, in advance of his visitors, ascended 
one or two steps, and, throwing open the leaves of the 
great hall-window, found himself close to little Pearl. 
The shadow of the curtain fell on Hester Prynne, and 
partially concealed her. 

“What have we here?” said Governor Bellingham, 
looking with surprise at the scarlet little figure before 
him. “I profess, I have never seen the like, since my 
days of vanity, in old King James’s time, when I was 
wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a 
court mask! There used to be a swarm of these small 


WE EEE DAN DOG EXAM INIS TER its 


apparitions, in holiday time; and we called them chil- 
dren of the Lord of Misrule. But how got such a 
guest into my hall?’ 

“Ay, indeed!” cried good old Mr. Wilson. ‘What 
little bird of scarlet plumage may this be? Methinks 
IT have seen just such figures, when the sun has been 
shining through a richly painted window, and tracing 
out the golden and crimson images across the floor. 
But that was in the old land. Prithee, young one, 
who art thou, and what has ailed thy mother to bedi- 
zen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Chris- 
tian child,—ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art 
thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies, whom we 
thought to have left behind us, with other relics of 
Papistry, in merry old England?” 

“T am mother’s child,’ answered the scarlet vision, 
“and my name is Pearl!” 

“Pearl?—Ruby, rather!—or Coral!—or Red Rose, 
at the very least, judging from thy hue!” responded 
the old minister, putting forth his hand in a vain at- 
tempt to pat little Pearl on the cheek. ‘‘But where is 
this mother of thine? Ah! I see,” he added; and, 
- turning to Governor Bellingham, whispered, ‘This is 
the selfsame child of whom we have held speech to- 
gether; and behold here the unhappy woman, Hester 
Prynne, her mother!” 

“Sayest thou so?” cried the Governor, ‘Nay, we 
might have judged that such a child’s mother must 
needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type of her 
of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and we 
will look into this matter forthwith.” 

Governor Bellingham stepped through the window 
into the hall, followed by his three guests. 


124 THE SCARLET LETTER 


“Hester Prynne,”’ said he, fixing his naturally stern 
regard on the wearer of the scarlet letter, “there hath 
been much question concerning thee, of late. The 
point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that 
are of authority “and influence, do weil discharge our 
consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there 
is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath 
stumbled and fallen, amid the pitfalls of this world. 
Speak thou, the child’s own mother! Were it not, 
thinkest thou, for thy little one’s temporal and eternal 
welfare that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad 
soberly, and disciplined strictly, and instructed in the 
truths of heaven and earth? What canst thou do for 
the child, in this kind?” 

~“T can teach my little Pearl what I have learned 
from this!’ answered Hester Prynne, laying her fin- 
ger on the red token. 

“Woman, it is thy badge of shame!” replied the 
stern magistrate. “It-is because of the stain which 
that letter indicates, that we would transfer thy child 
to other hands.” 

“Nevertheless,” said the mother, calmly, though 
erowing more pale, “this badge hath taught me—it 
daily teaches me—it is teaching me at this moment 
—lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and bet- 
ter, albeit they can profit nothing to myself.” 

“We will judge warily,” said Bellingham, “and look 
well what we are about to do. Good Master Wilson, 
I pray you, examine this Pearl—since that is her name, 
—and see whether she hath had such Christian nurture 
as befits a child of her age.” 

The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, 


THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER — 128 


and made an effort to draw Pearl betwixt his knees, 
But the child, unaccustomed to the touch of familiar- 
ity of any but her mother, escaped through the open 
window, and stood on the upper step looking like a 
wild tropical bird, of rich plumage, ready to take 
flight into the upper air. Mr. Wilson, not a little 
astonished at this outbreak,—for he was a grand. 
fatherly sort of personage, and usually a vast favorite 
with children,—essayed, however, to proceed with the 
examination. 

“Pearl,” said he, with great solemnity, “thou must 
take heed to instruction, that so, in due season, thou 
mayest wear in thy bosom the pearl of great price. 
Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?” 

Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for 
Hester Prynne, the daughter of a pious home, very 
soon after her talk with the child about her Heavenly 
Father, had begun to inform her of those truths which 
the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, 
imbibes with such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so 
large were the attainments of her three years’ lifetime, 
could have borne a fair examination in the New Eng- 
land Primer, or the first column of the Westminster 
Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward 
form of either of those celebrated works. But that 
perversity which all children have more or less of, 
and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, 
at the most inopportune moment, took thorough pos- 
session of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to 
speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her 
mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good 
Mr. Wilson’s questions, the child finally announced 
that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked 


126 HE SCARLET LENT ER ie 


by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by 
the prison-door. 

This fantasy was probably suggested by the near 
proximity of the Governor’s red roses, as Pearl stood 
outside of the window; together with her recollection 
of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in com- 
ing hither. 

Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, 
whispered something in the young clergyman’s ear. 
Hester Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even 
then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was star- 
tled to perceive what a change had come over his fea- 
tures,—how much uglier they were,—how his dark 
complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his 
figure more misshapen,—since the days when she had 
familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an in- 
stant, but was immediately constrained to give all her 
attention to the scene now going forward. 

“This is awful!” cried the Governor, slowly recov- 
ering from the astonishment into which Pearl’s re- 
sponse had thrown him. “Here is a child of three 
years old, and she cannot tell who made her! With- 
out question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, 
its present depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, 
gentlemen, we need inquire no further.” 

Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly 
into her arms, confronting the old Puritan magistrate 
with almost a fierce expression. Alone in the world, 
cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her 
heart alive, she felt that she possessed indefeasible 
rights against the world, and was ready to defend 
them to the death. 

“God gave me the child!” cried she. “He gave her 


PH BUP-CoUD AND PAE MINISTER) 129 


in requital of all things else, which he had taken from 
me. She is my happiness!—she is my torture, none 
the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes 
me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only ca- 
pable of being loved, and so endowed with a million- 
fold the power of retribution for my sin? Ye shall 
not take her! I will die first!” 

“My poor woman,” said the not unkind old minis- 
ter, ‘‘the child shall be well cared for !—far better than 
thou canst do it.” 

“God gave her into my keeping,’ repeated Hester 
Prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek. “I will 
not give her up!’’—And here, by a sudden impulse, 
she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, 
at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly 
so much as once to direct her eyes.—“Speak thou for 
me!” cried she. “Thou wast my pastor, and hadst 
charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these 
men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for met 
Thou knowest,—for thou hast sympathies which these 
men lack!—thou knowest what is in my heart, and 
what are a mother’s rights, and how much the stronger 
they are, when that mother has but her child and the 
scarlet letter! Look thou to it! I will not lose the 
child! Look to it!” 

At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated 
that Hester Prynne’s situation had provoked her to 
little less than madness, the young minister at once 
came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his 
heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nerv- 
ous temperament was thrown into agitation. He 
looked now more careworn and emaciated than as we 
described him at the scene of Hester’s public ignos 


128 THE SCARLET ALE TAT 


miny; and whether it were his failing health, or what- 
ever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a 
world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth. 

“There is truth in what she says,” began the minis- 
ter, with a voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, Inso- 
much that the hall reechoed, and the hollow armor 
rang with it,—“truth in what Hester says, and in the 
feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and 
gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature 
and requirements,—both seemingly so _ peculiar,— 
which no other mortal being can possess. And, more- 
over, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the 
relation between this mother and this child?” 

“Ay!—how is that, good Master Dimmesdale?” in- 
terrupted the Governor. “Make that plain, I pray 
you!” 

“It must be even so,’’ resumed the minister. “For, 
if we deem it otherwise, do we not thereby say that 
the Heavenly Father, the Creator of all flesh, hath 
lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no ac- 
count the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy 
lover ‘This child of its father’s guilt and its mother’s 
shame hath come from the hand of God, to work in 
many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly, 
and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep 
her. It was meant for a blessing, for the one blessing 
of her life! It was meant, doubtless, as the mother 
herself hath told us, for a retribution too; a torture to 
be felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a 
sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a trou- 
bled joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the 
garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of 
that red symbol which sears her bosom?” 


b) 


THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 129 


“Well said, again!” cried good Mr. Wilson. “I 
feared the woman had no better thought than to make 
a mountebank of her child!’ 

“Oh, not sol——not so!” continued Mr. Dimmes- 
dale. “She recognizes, believe me, the solemn mira- 
cle which God hath wrought, in the existence of that 
child. And may she feel, too,—what, methinks, is the 
very truth,—that this boon was meant, above all things 
else, to keep the mother’s soul alive, and to preserve 
her from blacker depths of sin into which Satan might 
else have sought to plunge her! Therefore it is good 
for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an infant 
immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sor- 
row, confided to her care,—to be trained up by her 
to righteousness,—to remind her, at every moment, 
of her fall,—but yet to teach her, as it were by the 
Creator’s sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to 
heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! 
Herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful 
father. For Hester Prynne’s sake, then, and no less 
for the poor child’s sake, let us leave them as Provi- 
dence hath seen fit to place them!” 

“You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness,” 
said old Roger Chillingworth, smiling at him. 

“And there is a weighty import in what my young 
brother hath spoken,’ added the Reverend Mr. Wil- 
son. “What say you, worshipful Master Bellingham? 
Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman?” 

“Indeed hath he,’”, answered the magistrate, “and 
hath adduced such arguments, that we will even leave 
the matter as it now stands; so long, at least, as there 
shall be no further scandal in the woman. Care must 
be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and 


130 LT ENS COA Te Be ESE 


stated examination in the catechism, at thy hands or 
Master Dimmesdale’s. Moreover, at a proper season, 
the tithing-men must take heed that she go both to 
school and to meeting.” 

The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had with- 
drawn a few steps from the group, and stood with his 
face partially concealed in the heavy folds of the win- 
dow-curtains; while the shadow of his figure, which 
the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with 
the vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, that wild and 
flighty little elf, stole softly towards him, and taking 
his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek 
against it; a caress so tender, and withal so unob- 
trusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked 
herself,—“Is that my Pearl?’ Yet she knew that 
there was love in the child’s heart, although it mostly 
revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her life- 
time had been softened by such gentleness as now. 
The minister,—for, save the long-sought regards of 
woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks of child- 
ish preference, accorded spontaneously by a spiritual 
instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us some- 
thing truly worthy to be loved,—the minister looked 
round, laid his hand on the child’s head, hesitated an 
instant, and then kissed her brow. Little Pearl’s un- 
wonted mood of sentiment lasted no longer; she 
laughed, and went capering down the hall, so airily, 
that old Mr. Wilson raised a question whether even 
her tiptoes touched the floor. | 

“The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I pro- 
fess,’ said he to Mr. Dimmesdale. ‘She needs no 
old woman’s broomstick to fly withal!” 

“A strange child!” remarked old Roger Chilling- 


HEEL P-GP DAN DitiHtEy MINTS LHR 13k 


worth. “It is easy to see the mother’s part in her. 
Would it be beyond a philosopher’s research, think ye, 
gentlemen, to analyze that child’s nature, and, from 
its make and mould, to give a shrewd guess at the 
father?” 

“Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to fol- 
low the clew of profane philosophy,” said Mr. Wilson. 
“Better to fast and pray upon it; and still better, it 
may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, unless 
Providence reveal it of -its own accord. Thereby, 
every good Christian man hath a title to show a 
father’s kindness towards the poor, deserted babe.” 

The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Hester 
Prynne, with Pearl, departed from the house. As they 
descended the steps, it is averred that the lattice of a 
chamber-window was thrown open, and forth into the 
sunny day was thrust the face of Mistress Hubbins, 
Governor Bellingham’s bitter-tempered sister, and the 
same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch. 

“Hist, hist!’ said she, while her ill-omened phys- 
iognomy seemed to cast a shadow over the cheerful 
newness of the house. “Wilt thou go with us to- 
night? ‘There will be a merry company in the forest; 
and I wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely 
Hester Prynne should make one.” 

“Make my excuse to him, so please you!” answered 
Hester, with a triumphant smile. “I must tarry at 
home, and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they 
taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with 
thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black 
Man’s book too, and that with mine own blood!” 

“We shall have thee there anon!” said the witch- 
lady, frowning, as she drew back her head. 


¥32 THE SCARLET LETTER 


But here—if we suppose this interview betwixt 
Mistress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to be authentic, 
and not a parable—was already an illustration of the 
young minister's argument against sundering the rela- 
tion of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. 
Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan’s 


snare. 


IX 
THE LEECH 


Unoper the appellation of Roger Chillingworth, the 
reader will remember, was hidden another name, which 
its former wearer had resolved should never more be 
spoken. It has been related how, in the crowd that 
witnessed Hester Prynne’s ignominious exposure, stood 
a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from 
the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom 
he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerful- 
ness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. 
Her matronly frame was trodden under all men’s feet. 
Infamy was babbling around her in the public market- 
place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach 
them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, 
there remained nothing but the contagion of her dis- 
honor,—which would not fail to be distributed in strict 
accordance and proportion with the intimacy and sa- 
credness of their previous relationship. Then why— 
since the choice was with himself—should the indt- 
vidual, whose connection with the fallen woman had 
been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come 
forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so lit- 
tle desirable? He resolved not to be pilloried beside 
her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to all but 
Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her 
silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of 

133 


134 THES @ARLE ET (isiadiy) ire 


mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and inter- 
ests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed 
lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long 
ago consigned him. This purpose once effected, new 
interests would immediately spring up, and likewise 
a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of 
force enough to engage the'full strength of his faculties. 

In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his resi- 
dence in the Puritan town, as Roger Chillingworth, 
without other introduction than the learning and in- 
telligence of which he possessed more than a common 
measure. As his studies, at a previous period of his 
life, had made him extensively acquainted with the 
medical science of the day, it was as a physician that 
he presented himself, and as such was cordially re- 
ceived. Skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical 
profession, were of rare occurrence in the colony. 
They seldom, it would appear, partook of the religious 
zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic. 
In their researches into the human frame, it may be 
that the higher and more subtile faculties of such men 
were materialized, and that they lost the spiritual view 
of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous 
mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to 
comprise all of life within itself. At all events, the 
health of the good town of Boston, so far as medicine 
had aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the guar- 
dianship of an aged deacon and apothecary, whose 
piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials 
in his favor than any that he could have produced in 
the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was one 
who combined the occasional exercise of that noble art 
with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To 


THE LEECH 135 


stich a professional body Roger Chillingworth was a 
brilliant acquisition. He soon manifested his famil- 
iarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of 
antique physic; in which every remedy contained a 
multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, 
as elaborately compounded as if the proposed result 
had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian captivity, 
moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the prop- 
erties of native herbs and roots; nor did he concea! 
from his patients, that these simple medicines, Na- 
ture’s boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large 
a share of his own confidence as the European phar- 
macopceia, which so many learned doctors had spent 
centuries in elaborating. 

This learned stranger was exemplary, as regarded, 
at least, the outward forms of a religious life, and, 
early after his arrival, had chosen for his spiritual 
guide the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The young 
divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, 
was considered by his more fervent admirers as little 
less than a heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should 
he live and labor for the ordinary term of life, to do 
as great deeds for the now feeble New England Church 
as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of 
the Christian faith. About this period, however, the 
health of Mr. Dimmesdale had evidently begun to fail. 
By those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness 
of the young minister’s cheek was accounted for by his 
too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment 
of parochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and 
vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order 
to keep the grossness of this earthly state from clog- 
ging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some declared, 


136 DAES SOAR Ih Ee ice te 


that, if Mr. Dimmesdale were really going to die, it 
was cause enough, that the world was not worthy to 
be any longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on 
the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed 
his belief, that, if Providence should see fit to remove 
him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to 
perform its humblest mission here on earth. With 
all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his 
decline, there could be no question of the fact. His 
form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and 
sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in 
it: he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other 
sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart, with 
first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain. 
Such was the young clergyman’s condition, and so 
imminent the prospect that his dawning light would be 
extinguished, all untimely, when Roger Chillingworth 
made his advent to the town. His first entry on the 
scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down, as 
it were, out of the sky, or starting from the nether 
earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily 
heightened to the miraculous. e was now known to 
be a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered 
herbs, and the blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up 
roots, and plucked off twigs from the forest-trees, like 
one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was value- 
less to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir 
Kenelm Digby, and other famous men,—whose scien- 
tific attainments were esteemed hardly less than super- 
natural,—as having been his correspondents or asso- 
ciates. Why, with such rank in the learned world, 
had he come hither? What could he, whose sphere 
was in great cities, be seeking in the wilderness? In 


THE LEECH 137 


answer to this query, a rumor gained ground,—and, 
however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible 
yeople,—that Heaven had wrought an absolute mira- 
cle, by transporting an eminent Doctor of Physic, from 
a German university, bodily through the air, and set- 
ting him down at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale’s study! 
Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that 
Heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the 
stage-effeet of what is called miraculous interposition, 
were inclined to see a providential hand in Roger Chil- 
lingworth’s so opportune arrival. 

This idea was countenanced by the strong interest 
which the physician ever manifested in the young clergy- 
man; he attached himself to him as a parishioner, and 
sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from 
his naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great 
alarm at his pastor’s. state of health, but was anx- 
ious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, 
seemed not despondent of a favorable result. The 
elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young 
and fair maidens, of Mr. Dimmesdale’s flock, were 
alike importunate that he should make trial of the 
physician’s frankly offered skill, Mr. Dimmesdale 
gently repelled their entreaties. 

“T need no medicine,” said he. 

But how could the young minister say so, when, 
with every successive Sabbath, his cheek was paler 
and thinner, and his voice more tremulous than before, 
—when it had. now become a constant habit, rather 
than a casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? 
Was he weary of his labors?» Did he wish to die? 
These questions were solemnly propounded to Mr. 
Dimmesdale by the elder ministers of Boston and the 


138 DAES GARE Tuer Ey eres 


deacons of his church, who, to use their own phrase, 
“dealt with him” on the sin of rejecting the aid which 
Providence so manifestly held out. He listened in si- 
lence, and finally promised to confer with the physi- 
cian. 

“Were it God’s will,” said the Reverend Mr. Dim- 
mesdale, when, in fulfilment of this pledge, he re- 
quested old Roger Chillingworth’s professional advice, 
“T could be well content that my labors, and my sor- 
rows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end 
with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my 
grave, and the spiritual go with me to my eternal state, 
rather than that you should put your skill to the proof 
in my behalf.”’ 

“Ah,” replied Roger Chillingworth, with ‘ee quiet- 
ness which, whether imposed or natural, marked all his 
deportment, “it 1s thus that a young clergyman 1s apt 
to speak. Youthful men, not having taken a deep root, 
give up their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, 
who walk with God on earth, would fain be away, to 
walk with him on the golden pavements of the New 
Jerusalem.” 

“Nay,” rejoined the young minister, putting his hand 
to his heart, with a push of pain flitting over his brow. 

“were I worthier to walk there, I could be better content 
to toil here.”’ 

“Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly,” 
said the physician. 

In this manner, the mysterious old Roger Chilling- 
worth became the medical adviser of the Reverend Mr. 
Dimmesdale. As not only the disease interested the 
physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the 
character and qualities of the patient, these two men, 


aoe EOEe 139 


so different in age, came gradually to spend much time 
together. For the sake of the minister’s health, and 
to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm 
in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in 
the forest; mingling various talk with the plash and 
murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem 
among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the 
guest of the other, in his place of study and retire- 
ment. There was a fascination for the minister in 
the company of the man of science, in whom he recog- 
nized an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth 
or scope; together with a range and freedom of ideas 
that he would have vainly looked for among the mem- 
bers of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, 
if not shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. 
Mr. Dimmesdale was a true priest, a true religionist, 
with. the reverential sentiment largely Gavsionnal and 
an order of mind that impelled itself powerfully along 
the track of a creed, and wore its passage continually 
deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society 
would he have been what is called a man of liberal 
views; it would always be essential to his peace to feel 
the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while i: 
confined him within its iron framework. Not the 
less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did 
he feel the occasional relief of looking at the universe 
through the medium of another kind of intellect than 
those with which he habitually held converse. It was 
as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer 
atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his 
life was wasting itself away, amid lamplight, or ob- 
structed day-beams, and the musty fragrance, be it 
sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But the 


r 


140 LL TOES Gee PT aan 


{ 
air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with 
comfort. So the minister, and the physician with him, 
withdrew again within the limits of what their church 
defined as orthodox. 

Thus Roger Chillingworth scrutinized his patient 
carefully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life, 
keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts 
familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown amidst 
other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call 
out something new to the surface of his character. 
He deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the 
man, before attempting to do him good. Wherever 
there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the 
physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of 
these. In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and imagina- 
tion were so active, and sensibility so intense, that 
the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its ground- 
work there. So Roger Chillingworth—the man of 
skill, the kind and friendly physician—strove to goa 
deep into his patient’s bosom, delving among his prin- 
ciples, prying into his recollections, and probing every- 
thing with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a 
dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, 
who has opportunity and license to undertake such a 
quest, and skill to follow it up. A man burdened 
with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of 
his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, 
and a nameless something more,—let us call it intui- 
tion; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably 
prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the 
power, which must be born with him, to bring his 
mind into such affinity with his patient’s, that this last 
shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himsel{ 


THE, LEECH I4t 


only to have thought; if such revelations be received 
without tumult, and acknowledged not so often by an 
uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath, 
and here and there a word, to indicate that all is. un- 
derstood; if to these qualifications of a confidant be 
joined the advantages afforded by his recognized char- 
acter as a physician,—then, at some inevitable mo- 
ment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and 
flow forth in a dark, but transparent stream, bringing 
all its mysteries into the daylight. 

Roger Chillingworth possessed all, or most, of the 
attributes above enti rated) Nevertheless, time went 
on; a kind of intimacy, as we have said, grew up be- 
tween these two cultivated minds, which had as wide 
a field as the whole sphere of human thought and 
study, to meet upon; they discussed every topic of 
ethics and religion, of public affairs and private char- 
acter; they talked much, on both sides, of matters that 
seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such 
as the physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out 
of the minister’s consciousness into his companion’s 
ear. The latter had his suspicions, indeed, that even 
the nature of Mr. Dimmesdale’s bodily disease had 
never fairly been. revealed to him. It was a strange 
reserve! 

After a time, at a hint ior Roger Chillingworth, 
the friends of Mr. Dimmesdale effected an arrange. 
ment by which the two were lodged in the same house; 
so that every ebb and flow of the minister’s life-tide 
might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached 
physician. There was much joy throughout the town 
when this greatly desirable object was attained. It 
was held to be the best possible measure for the young 


142 Vik SCARLETS ER TER 


ys 
clergyman’s welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by 
such as felt authorized to do so, he had selected some 
one of the many blooming damsels, spiritually devoted 
to him, to become his devoted wife. This latter step, 
however, there was no present prospect that Arthur 
Dimmesdale would be prevailed upon to take; he re- 
jected all suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy 
were one of his articles of church-discipline. Doomed 
by his own choice, therefore, as Mr. Dimmesdale so 
evidently was, to eat his unsavory morsel always at 
another’s board, and endure the life-long chill which 
must be his lot who. seeks to warm himself only at 
another’s fireside, it truly seemed that this sagacious, 
experienced, benevolent old physician, with his concord 
of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, 
was the very man of all mankind to be constantly within 
reach of his voice. 

The new abode of the two friends was with a pious 
widow, of good social rank, who dwelt in a house cov- 
pring pretty nearly the site on which the venerable 
structure of King’s Chapel has since been built. It 
had the graveyard, originally Isaac Johnson’s home- 
field, on one side, and so well adapted to call up seri- 
ous reflections, suited to their respective employments, 
in both minister and man of physic. The motherly 
care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Dimmesdale 
a front apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy 
window-curtains, to create a noontide shadow, when 
desirable. The walls were hung round with tapestry, 
said to be from the Gobelin looms, and at all events, 
‘epresenting the Scriptural story of David and Bath- 
heba, and Nathan the Prophet, in colors still unfaded, 
out which made the fair woman of the scene almost 


THEO LEECH 143 


as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer. 
Here, the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with 
parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of 
Rabbis, and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant 
divines, even while they vilified and decried that class 
of writers, were yet constrained often to avail them- 
selves. On the other side of the house, old Roger 
Chillingworth arranged his study and laboratory; not 
such as a modern man of science would reckon even 
tolerably complete, but provided with a distilling appa- 
ratus, and the means of compounding drugs and chemi- 
cals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to 
turn to purpose. With such commodiousness of situa- 
tion, these two learned persons sat themselves down, 
each in his own domain, yet familiarly passing from 
one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual and 
not incurious inspection into one another’s business. 
And the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s best dis- 
cerning friends, as we have intimated, very reasonably 
imagined that the hand of Providence had done all this, 
for the purpose—besought in so many public, and do- 
mestic, and secret prayers—of restoring the young min- 
ister to health. But—it must now be said—another 
portion of the community had latterly begun to take its 
own view of the relation betwixt Mr. Dimmesdale and 
the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructed 
multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly 
apt to be deceived. When, however, it forms its judg- 
ment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great 
and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often 
so profound and so unerring, as to possess the character 
of truths supernaturally revealed. The people, in the 
case of which we speak, could justify its prejudice 


144 TREES GUE TE Dae ore 


against Roger Chillingworth by no fact or argument 
worthy of serious refutation. There was an aged handi- 
craftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London 
at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder, now 
some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the 
physician, under some other name, which the narrator 
of the story had now forgotten, in company with Doc- 
tor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was im- 
plicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three in- 
dividuals hinted, that the man of skill, during his 
Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments 
by joining in the incantations of the savage priests; 
who were universally acknowledged to be powerful en- 
chanters, often performing seemingly miraculous cures 
by their skill in the black art. A large number—and 
many of these were persons of such sober sense and 
practical observation that their opinions would have 
been valuable in other matters—affirmed that Roger 
Chillingworth’s aspect had undergone a_ remarkable 
change while he had dwelt in town, and especially since 
his abode with Mr. Dimmesdale. At first his expression 
had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there 
was something ugly and evil in his face, which they 
had not previously noticed, and which grew still the 
more obvious to sight the oftener they looked upon him. 
According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory 
had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed 
with infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his 
visage was getting sooty with the smoke. 

To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused 
opinion, that the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, like 
many other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages 
of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan 


NeGe, CileloOses 145 


himself, or Satan’s emissary, in the guise of old Roger 
Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine 
permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergy- 
man’s intimacy, and plot against his soul. No sensible 
man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the 
victory would turn. The people looked, with an un- 
shaken hope, to see the minister come forth out of the 
conflict transfigured with the glory which he would un- 
questionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it was sad 
to think of the perchance mortal agony through which 
he must struggle towards his triumph. 

Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the 
depths of the poor minister's eyes, the battle was a 
sore one, and the victory anything but secure. 


Xx 


THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 


Oxp Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been 
calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affec- 
tions, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, 
a pure and upright man. He had begun an investiga- 
tion, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity 
of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the ques- 
tion involved no more than the air-drawn lines and 
figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human pas- . 
sions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he 
proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though 
still calm, necessity seized the old man within its gripe, 
and never set him free again until he had done all its 
bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman’s heart, 
like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton 
delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that 
had been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but likely 
to find nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas 
for his own soul, if these were what he sought! 

Sometimes a light glimmered out of the physician’s 
eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of 
a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of 
ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan’s awful doorway 
in the hill-side, and quivered on the pilgrim’s face. 
The soil where this dark miner was working had per- 


chance shown indications that encouraged him. 
146 


DU ibis Orne oy PE LS ee ee ND ae 


bd 


“This man,” said he, at one such moment, to him- 
self, “pure as they deem him,—all spiritual as he seems, 
—hath inherited a strong animal nature from his father 
or his mother. Let us dig a little further in the direc- 
tion of this vien!”’ 

Then, after long search into the minister’s dim in- 
terior, and turning over many precious materials, in 
the shape of high aspirations for the welfare of his 
race, warm love of souls, pure sentiments, natural 
piety, strengthened by thought and study, and illumi- 
nated by revelation,—all of which invaluable gold was 
perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker,—he would 
turn back discouraged, and begin his quest towards 
another point. He groped along as stealthily, with as 
cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief 
entering a chamber where a man lies only half asleep, 
—or, if it may be, broad awake,—with purpose to steal 
the very treasure which this man guards as the apple 
of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, 
the floor would now and then creak; his garments 
would rustle; the shadow of his presence, in a for- 
bidden proximity, would be thrown across his victim. 
In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of 
nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, 
would become vaguely aware that something inimical 
to his peace had thrust itself into relation with him. 
But old Roger Chillingworth, too, had perceptions that 
were almost intuitive; and when the minister threw his 
startled eyes towards him, there the physician sat; his 
kind, watchful, sympathizing, but never intrusive friend. 

Yet Mr. Dimmesdale would perhaps have seen this 
individual’s character more perfectly, if a certain mor- 
bidness, to which sick hearts are liable, had not rendered 


a» 


148 THE SOAR TVG Tri, 


him suspicious of all mankind. Trasting no man as ; 
his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the — 
latter actually appeared. He therefore still kept up a 


familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old 


physician in his study; or visiting the labAratone and, 
for recreation’s sake, siyatals the processes by which 
weeds were converted into draes of potency. 

One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his 
elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked to- 
wards the graveyard, he talked with Roger Chilling- 
worth, while the old man was examining a bundle of 
unsightly plants. 

“Where,” asked he, with a look askance at them,— 
for it was the clergyman’s peculiarity that he seldom, 
nowadays, looked straightforth at any object, whether 
human or inanimate,—“where, my kind doctor, did you 
gather those herbs, with such a dark flabby leaf?” 

“Even in the graveyard here at hand,”’ answered the 
physician continuing his employment. ‘They are new 
tome. I found them growing on a grave, which bore 
no tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead man, 
save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves 
to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his 
heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that 
was buried with him, and which he had done better 
to confess during his lifetime.” 

“Perchance,” said Mr. Dimmesdale, “he earnestly de- 
sired it, but could not.” 

“And wherefore?” rejoined the physician. ‘‘Where- 
fore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly 
for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have 
sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest an 
unspoken crime?” 


THE LEECH\AND: HIS PATIEN PF tAg 


b) 


“That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours,” replied 
the minister. “There can be, if I forebode aright, no 
power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether 
by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets 
that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, 
making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold 
them, until the day when all hidden things shall be re- 
vealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, 
as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts 
and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of 
the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of 
it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly err, are 
meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction 
ofall intelligent beings, who will -tand waiting, on 
that day, to see the dark problem of this life made 
plain. A knowledge of men’s hearts will be needful 
to the completest solution of that problem. And I 
conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such mis- 
erable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at 
‘that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy un- 
utterable.”’ 

“Then why not reveal them here?’ asked Roger 
Chillingworth, glancing quietly aside at the minister. 
“Why should not the guilty ones sooner avail them- 
selves of this unutterable solace?” 

“They mostly do,” said the clergyman, griping hard 
at his breast as if afflicted with an importunate throb 
of pain. “Many, many a poor soul hath given its 
confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, bit while 
strong in life, and fair in reputation.. And ever, after 
such an outpouring, oh, what a relief have I witnessed 
in those sinful brethren! even as in one who at last 
draws free air, after long stifling with his ow pol- 


X50 LITE NMSOARL EL Ten yiiesye 


luted breath. How can it be otherwise? Why should 
a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefer 
to keep the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather 
than fling it forth at once, and let the universe take 
care of it!” 

“Yet some men bury their secrets thus,” observed the 
‘ realm physician. 

‘True; there are such men,” answered Mr. Dimmes- 
dale. “But, not to suggest more obvious reasons, it 
may be that they are kept silent by the very constitution 
of their nature. Or,—can we not suppose it?—guilty 
as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God’s 
glory and man’s welfare, they shrink from displaying 
themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, 
thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no 
evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to 
their own unutterable torment, they go about among 
their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow 
while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with 
iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.” 

“These men deceive themselves,” said Roger Chilling- 
worth, with somewhat more emphasis than usual, and 
making a slight gesture with his forefinger. ‘They 
fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to 
them. Their love for man, their zeal for God’s service, 
—these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their 
hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has 
unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a 
aellish breed within them. But, if they seek to glorify 
(sod, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands! 
lf they would serve their fellowmen, let them do it by 
making manifest the power and reality of conscience, 
in constraining them to penitential self-abasement! 


DEL TOL OAT G AUN DELL Sy REE Nip od 


Wouldst thou have me to believe, O wise and pious 
friend, that a false show can be better—can be more 
for God’s glory, or man’s welfare—than God’s own 
truth? Trust me, such men deceive themselves!’’ 

“It may be so,” said the young clergyman, indiffer- 
ently, as waiving a discussion that he considered irrel- 
evant or unreasonable. He had a ready faculty, in- 
deed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too 
sensitive and nervous temperament. “But, now, I 
would ask of my well-skilled physician, whether, in 
good sooth, he deems me to have profited by his kindly 
care of this weak frame of mine?” 

Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they 
heard the clear, wild laughter of a young child’s voice, 
proceeding from the adjacent burial-ground. Looking 
instinctively from the open window,—for it was sum- 
mer-time,—the minister beheld Hester Prynne and 
little Pearl passing along the footpath that traversed 
the enclosure. Pearl looked as beautiful as the day, 
but was in one of those moods of perverse merriment 
which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her 
entirely out of the sphere of sympathy or human con- 
tact. She now skipped irreverently from one grave 
to another; until, coming to the broad, flat, armorial 
tombstone of a departed worthy,—perhaps of Isaac 
Johnson himself,—she began to dance upon it. In reply 
to her mother’s command and entreaty that she would 
behave more decorously, little Pearl paused to gather 
the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew be- 
side the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she arranged 
them along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated 
the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature 


152 THE SCARLET LETTER 


was, tenaciously adhered. Hester did not pluck them 
off. 

Roger Chillingworth had by this time approached the 
window, and smiled grimly down. 

“There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no 
regard for human ordinances or opinions, right or 
wrong, mixed up with that child’s composition,” re- 
marked he, as much to himself as to his companion. 
“T saw her, the other day, bespatter the Governor him- 
self with water, at the cattle-trough in Spring Lane. 
What, in Heaven’s name, is she? Is the imp altogether 
evil? Hath she affections? Hath she any discoverable 
principle of being?” 

“None,—save the freedom of a broken law,” an- 
swered Mr. Dimmesdale, in a quiet way, as if he had 
been discussing the point within himself. “Whether 
capable of good, I know not.” 

The child probably overheard their voices; for, look- 
ing up to the window, with a bright, but naughty smile 
of mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly 
burrs at the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The sensitive 
clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the light 
missile. Detecting his emotion, Pearl clapped her little 
hands in the most extravagant ecstasy. Hester Prynne, 
likewise, had involuntarily looked up; and all these four 
persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, 
till the child laughed aloud; and shouted,—“‘Come away, 
mother! Come away, or yonder old Black Man will 
catch you! He hath got hold of the minister already. 
Come away, mother, or he will catch you! But he 
cannot catch little Pearl!’ 

So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and 
frisking fantastically, among the hillocks of the dead 


JURE BE Oi AN ELS) sein he Nite tie 


people, like a creature that had nothing in common 
with a bygone and buried generation, nor owned herself 
akin to it. It was as if she had been made afresh, out 
of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to_ 
live her own life, and be a law unto herself, without 
her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime. 

“There goes a woman,’ resumed Roger Chilling- 
worth, after a pause, “who, be her demerits what they 
may, hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness 
which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is Hester 
Prynne the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet 
letter on her breast?” 

“T do verily believe it,” answered the clergyman. 
“Nevertheless I cannot answer for her. There was a 
look of pain in her face, which I would gladly have 
been spared the sight of. But still, methinks, it must 
needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his 
pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all 
up in his heart.”’ 

There was another pause; and the physician began 
anew to examine and arrange the plants which he had 
gathered. 

“You inquired of me, a little time agone,” said he, 
at length, “my judgment as touching your health.” 

“T did,” answered the clergyman, “‘and would gladly 
learn it. Speak frankly, I pray you, be it for life or 
death.” 

“Freely, then, and plainly,” said the physician, still 
busy with his plants, but keeping a wary eye on Mr. 
Dimmesdale, “the disorder is a strange one; not so 
mutch in itself, nor as outwardly manifested,— in so far, 
at least, as the symptoms have been laid open to my 
observation. Looking daily at you, my good “ir, and 


d 


154 THE SCARLET BERET 


watching the tokens of your aspect, now for months 
gone by, I should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, 
yet not so sick but that an instructed and watchful 
physician might well hope to cure you. But—I know 
not what to say-——the disease is what I seem to know, 
yet know it not.” 

“You speak in riddles, learned Sir,” said the pale 
minister, glancing aside out of the window. 

“Then to speak more plainly,” continued the phy- 
sician, “and I crave pardon, Sir,—should it seem tc 
require pardon,—for this needful plainness of my 
speech. Let me ask,—as your friend,—as one having 
charge, under Providence, of your life and physical 
well-being,—hath all the operation of this disorder been 
fairly laid open and recounted to me?” 

“How can you question it?’ asked the minister. 
“Surely, it were child’s play to call in a physician, and 
then hide the sore!’ 

“You would tell me, then, that I know all?” said 
Roger Chillingworth, deliberately, and fixing an eye, 
bright with intense and concentrated intelligence, on 
the munister’s face. “Be 1t so!\' But, again? beste 
whom only the outward and physical evil is laid open, 
knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called 
upon to cure. A bodily disease, which we look upon 
as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but 
a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. Your 
pardon, once again, good Sir, if my speech give the 
shadow of offence. You, Sir, of all men whom I have 
known, are he whose body is the closest conjoined, and 
imbued, and identified, so to speak, with the spirit 
whereof it is the instrument.” 

“Then I need ask no further,” said the clergyman, 


4HE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 155 


somewhat hastily rising from his chair. ‘You deal 
not, I take it, in medicine for the soul!’ 

“Thus, a sickness,’ continued Roger Chillingworth, 
going on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the 
interruption,—but standing up, and confronting the 
emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low, 
dark, and misshapen figure,—“‘a sickness, a sore place, 
if we may so call it, in your spirit, hath immediately its 
appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame. Would 
you, therefore, that your physician heal the bodily evil? 
How may this be, unless you first lay open to him the 
wound or trouble in your soul?” 

“No!—not to thee!—not to an earthly physician!” 
cried Mr. Dimmesdale, passionately, and turning his 
eyes, full and bright, and with a kind of flerceness, on 
old Roger Chillingworth. “Not to thee! But, if it be 
the soul’s disease, then do I commit myself to the one 
Physician of the soul! He, if it stand with his good 
pleasure, can cure; or he can kill! Let him do with 
me as, in his justice and wisdom, he shall see good. 
But who art thou, that meddlest in this matter ?—that 
dares thrust himself between the sufferer and his 
God?” | 

With a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room. 

“Tt is as well to have made this step,” said Roger 
Chillingworth to himself, looking after the minister 
with a grave smile. ‘There is nothing lost. We shall - 
be friends again anon. But see, now, how passion 
takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of him- 
self! As with one passion, so with another! He hath: 
done a wild thing erenow, this pious Master Dimmes- 
dale, in the hot passion of his heart!” 

It proved not difficult to reéstablish the intimacy of 


356 THE SCARLET VEER Tc 


the two companions, on the same footing and in the 
same degree as heretofore. The young clergyman, after 
a few hours of privacy, was sensible that the disorder 
of his nerves had hurried him into an unseemly out- 
break of temper, which there had been nothing in the 
physician’s words to excuse or palliate. He marvelled, 
indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust back 
the kind old man, when merely proffering the advice 
which it was his duty to bestow, and which the minister 
himself had expressly sought. With these remorseful 
feelings, he lost no time in making the amplest apolo- 
gies, and besought his friend still to continue the care, 
which, if not successful in restoring him to health, had, 
in all probability, been the means of prolonging his 
feeble existence to that hour. Roger Chillingworth 
readily assented, and went on with his medical super- 
vision of the minister; doing his best for him, in all 
good faith, but always quitting the patient’s apart- 
ment, at the close of a professional interview, with a 
mysterious and puzzled smile upon his lips. This ex- 
pression was invisible in Mr. Dimmesdale’s presence, 
but grew strongly evident as the physician crossed the 
threshold. 

“A rare case!” he muttered. “I must needs look 
deeper into it. A strange sympathy betwixt soul and 
body! Were it only for the art’s sake, I must search 
this matter to the bottom!” 

It came to pass, not long after the scene above re- 
corded, that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, at noon- 
day, and entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slum- 
ber, sitting in his chair, with a large black-letter volume 
epen before him on the table. It must have been a 
work of vast ability in the somniferous school of litera- 


RAL EOP AND ATS Pa TPN | ieee? 


ture. The profound depth of the minister’s repose waa 
the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those 
persons whose sleep, ordinarily, is as light, as fitful, and 
as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a 
twig. To such an unwonted remoteness, however, had 
his spirit now withdrawn into itself, that he stirred not 
in his chair when old Roger Chillingworth, without any 
extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The 
physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid 
his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the vestment 
that, hitherto, had always covered it even from the 
professional eye. 

Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered, and 
slightly stirred. 

After a brief pause, the physician turned away. 

But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and hor- 
ror! With what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too 
mighty to be expressed only by the eye and features, 
and therefore bursting forth through the whole ugli- 
ness of his figure, and making itself even riotously 
manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he 
threw up his arms towards the ceiling, and stamped 
his foot upon the floor! Had a man seen old Roger 
Chillingworth, at that moment of his ecstasy, he would 
have had no need to ask how Satan comports himself 
when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won 
into his kingdom. 

But what distinguished the physician’s ecstasy from 
Satan’s was the trait of wonder in it! 


XI 
THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 


AFTER the incident last described, the intercourse 
between the clergyman and the physician, though ex- 
ternally the same, was really of another character than 
it had previously been. The intellect of Roger Chil- 
lingworth had now a sufficiently plain path before it. 
It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid 
out for himself to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as 
he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of 
malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfor- 
tunate old man, which led him to imagine a more inti- 
mate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon 
an enemy. To make himself the one trusted friend, to 
whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the 
agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush 
of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty 
sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart 
would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, 
the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving! All that dark 
treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom noth- 
ing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance! 

The clergyman’s shy and sensitive reserve had 
balked this scheme. Roger Chillingworth, however, 
was inclined to be hardly, if at all, less satisfied with 
the aspect of affairs, which Providence—using the 


avenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, per- 
r58 


THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 159 


chance, pardoning where it seemed most to punish— 
had substituted for his black devices. A _ revelation, 
he could almost say, had been granted to him. It mat- 
tered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from 
what other region. By its aid, in all the subsequent 
relations betwixt him and Mr. Dimmesdale, not merely 
the external presence, but the very inmost soul, of the 
latter, seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so 
that he could see and comprehend its every movement. 
He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a 
chief actor, in the poor minister’s interior world. He 
could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse 
him with a throb of agony? The victim was forever 
on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that 
controlled the engine; and the physician knew it well! 
Would he startle him with sudden fear? As at the 
waving of a magician’s wand, uprose a grisly phan- 
tom,—uprose a thousand phantoms,—in many shapes, 
of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round about 
the clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at hig 
breast ! 

All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect 
that the minister, though he had constantly a dim per- 
ception of some evil influence watching over him, could 
never gain a knowledge of its actual nature. True, 
he looked doubtfully, fearfully,—even, at times, with 
horror and the bitterness of hatred,—at the deformed 
figure of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, 
his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent 
acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in 
the clergyman’s sight; a token implicitly to be relied 
on, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter 
than he was willing tq acknowledge to himself. For, 


160 TUES OAC Ae alias 


as it was impossible to assign a reason for such dis- 
trust and abhorrence, so Mr. Dimmesdale, conscious 
that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his 
heart’s entire substance, attributed all his presenti- 
ments to no other cause. He took himself to task for 
his bad sympathies in reference to Roger Chilling- 
worth, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn 
from them, and did his best to root them out. Un- 
able to accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter 
of principle, continued his habits of social familiarity 
with the old man, and thus gave him constant oppor- 
tunities for perfecting the purpose to which—poor, 
forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched than 
his victim—the avenger had devoted himself. 

While thus suffering under bodily disease, and 
enawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, 
and given over to the machinations of his deadliest 
enemy, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had achieved a 
brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it, 
indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual 
gifts, his moral perceptions, his power of experiencing 
and communicating emotion, were kept in a state of 
preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his 
daily life. His fame, though still on its upward slope, 
already overshadowed the soberer reputations of his 
fellow-clergymen, eminent as several of them were. 
There were scholars among them, who had spent more 
years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the 
divine profession, than Mr. Dimmesdale had lived; 
and who might well, therefore, be more profoundly 
versed in such solid and valuable attainments than 
their youthful brother. There were men, too, of a 
sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a 


THE INTERIOR: OF: A. HEART 161 


far greater share of shrewd, hard, iron, or granite un- 
derstanding; which, duly mingled with a fair propor- 
tion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly re- 
spectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the 
clerical species. There were others, again, true saintly 
fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary 
toil among their books, and by patient thought, and 
etherealized, moreover, by spiritual communications 
with the better world, into which their purity of life 
had almost introduced these holy personages, with their 
garments of mortality still clinging to them. All that 
they lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen 
disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flames; symbol- 
izing, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign 
and unknown languages, but that of addressing the 
whole human brotherhood in the heart’s native lan- 
guage. These fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked 
Heaven’s last and rarest attestation of their office, the 
Tongue of Flame. They would have vainly sought 
—had they ever dreamed of seeking—to express the 
highest truths through the humblest medium of fa- 
miliar words and images. Their voices came down, 
afar and indistinctly, from the upper heights where 
they habitually dwelt. 

Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men 
that Mr. Dimmesdale, by many of his traits of char- 
acter, naturally belonged. To the high mountain-peaks 
of faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had not 
the tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever 
it might be, of crime or anguish, beneath which it was 
his doom to totter. It kept him down, on a level with 
the lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose 
voice the angels might else have listened to and an- 


162 TEV SCARY Bish hie ke 


swered! But this very burden it was that gave him 
sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of 
mankind, so that his heart vibrated in unison with 
theirs, and received their pain into itself, and sent 
its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, 
in gushes of sad, persuasive eloquence. Oftenest 
| persuasive, but sometimes terrible! The people knew 
not the power that moved them thus. They deemed 
the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. They 
fancied him the mouth-piece of Heaven’s messages of 
wisdom, and rebuke, and love. In their eyes, the very 
ground on which he trod was sanctified. The virgins 
of his church grew pale around him, victims of a pas- 
sion so imbued with religious sentiment that they im- 
agined it to be all religion, and brought it openly, in 
their white bosoms, as their most acceptable sacrifice 
before the altar. ‘The aged members of his flock} 
beholding Mr. Dimmesdale’s frame so feeble, while 
they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity, be- 
lieved that he would go heavenward before them, and 
enjoined it upon their children, that their old bones 
should be buried close to their young pastor’s holy 
grave. And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. 
Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned 
with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, 
because an accursed thing must there be buried! 

It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public 
veneration tortured him! It was his genuine impulse 
to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow- 
‘like, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had 
not its divine essence as the life within their life. 
Then, what was he?—a substancer—or the dimmest 
of all shadows? He longed to speak out, from his 


THE INTERIOR OF ‘A HEART 163 


own pulpit, at the full height of his voice, and tell the 
people what he was. “I, whom you behold in these 
black garments of the priesthood,—I, who ascend the 
sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking 
upon myself to hold communion, in your behalf, with 
the Most High Omniscience,—I, in whose daily life 
you discern the sanctity of Enoch,—I, whose foot- 
steps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my earthly 
track, whereby the pilgrims that shall come after me 
may be guided to the regions of the blest,—I, who 
have laid the hand of baptism upon your children,— 
I, who have breathed the parting prayer over your 
dying friends, to whom the Amen sounded faintly 
from a world which they had quitted,—I, your pas- 
tor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a 
pollution and a lie!” 

More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the 
pulpit, with a purpose never to come down its steps 
until he should have spoken words like the above 
More than once, he had cleared his throat, and drawn 
in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when 
sent forth again, would come burdened with the black 
secret of his soul. More than once—nay, more than 
a hundred times—he had actually spoken! Spoken! 
But how? He had told his hearers that he was alto- 
gether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst 
of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable 
iniquity; and that the only wonder was that they did 
not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their 
eyes, by the burning wrath of the Almighty! Could 
there be plainer speech than this? Would not the 
people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous im- 
pulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit, which he 


164 PES OAT ET yi Ai eae 


defiled? Not so, indeed! They heard it all, and did 
but reverence him the more. They little guessed what 
deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning words. 
“The godly youth!’ said they among themselves. “The 
saint on earth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in 
his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he 
behold in thine or mine!” The minister well knew— 
subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was! the light 
in which his vague confession would be viewed. He 
had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making 
the avowa! of a guilty conscience, but had gained only 
one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without 
the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had 
spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the 
veriest falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his 
nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few 
men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, he 
loathed his miserable self! 

His inward trouble drove him io practices more in 
accordance with the old, corrupted faith of Rome, than 
with the better light of the church in which he had 
been born and bred. In Mr. Dimmesdale’s secret closet, 
under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. 
Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had 
plied it on his own shoulders; laughing bitterly at 
himself the while, and smiting so much the more piti- 
lessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, 
too, as it has been that of many other pious Puritans, 
to fast,—not, however, like them, in order to purify 
the body and render it the fitter medium of celestial 
illumination, but rigorously, and until his knees trem- 
bled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, 
‘ikewise, night after night, sometimes in utter dark 


THR INTERIOR OR A-HEART 165 


ness; sometimes with a glimmering lamp; and some- 
times, viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by the 
most- powerful light which he could throw upon it. 
He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith 
he tortured, but could not purify, himself. In these 
lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions 
seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, 
and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimness 
of the chamber, or more vividly, and close beside him; 
within the looking-glass. Now it was a herd of dia- 
bolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale min- 
ister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group 
of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow- 
laden, but grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came 
the dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded 
father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother, turn- 
ing her face away as she passed by. Ghost of a mother, 
—thinnest fantasy of a mother,—methinks she might 
yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! 
And now, through the chamber which these spectral 
thoughts had made so ghastly, glided Hester Prynne, 
leading along little Pearl, in her scarlet garb, and 
pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet letter on 
her bosom, and then at the clergyman’s own breast. 
None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At 
any moment, by an effort of his will, he could discern 
substances through their misty lack of substance, and 
convince himself that they were not solid in their na- 
ture, like yonder table of carved oak, «+: that big, 
square, leathern-bound and brazen-clasped volume of 
divinity. But, for all that, they were, in one sense, 
the truest and most substantial things which the poor 
minister now dealt with. It is the unspeakable misery 


166 REEVSOARLE Rina EE hy, 


of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and sub- 
stance out of whatever realities there are around us, 
and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit’s joy 
and nutriment. Yo the untrue man, the whole uni- 
verse is false,—it is impalpable,—it shrinks to noth- 
ing within his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he 
shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, 
indeed, ceases to exist. The only truth that continued 
to give Mr. Dimmesdale a real existence on this earth 
was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissem- 
bled expression of it in his aspect. Had he once found 
power to smile, and wear a face of gayety, there would 
have been no such man! 

On one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly 
hinted at, but forborne to picture forth, the minister 
started from his chair. A new thought had struck 
him. There might be a moment’s peace in it. Attir- 
ing himself with as much care as if it had been for 
public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he 
stole softly down the staircase, undid the door, and 
issued forth, 


XII 
THE MINISTER’S VIGIL 


WALKING in the shadow of a dream, as it were, 
and perhaps actually under the influence of a species 
of somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdale reached the spot 
where, now so long since, Hester Prynne had lived 
through her first hours of public ignominy. The same 
platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with 
the storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot- 
worn, too, with the tread of many culprits who had 
since ascended it, remained standing beneath the bal- 
cony of the meeting-house. The minister went up 
the steps. 

It was an obscure night of early May. An unvaried 
pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky from, 
zenith to horizon. If the same multitude which had 
stood as eye-witnesses while Hester Prynne sustained 
her punishment could now have been summoned forth, 
they would have discerned no face above the platform, 
nor hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark 
gray of the midnight. But the town was all asleep. 
There was no peril of discovery. The minister might 
stand there, if it so pleased him, until morning should 
redden in the east, without other risk than that the 
dank and chill night-air would creep into his frame, 
and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog his 


throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the 
167 


168 DNL EOS Ca ee ee Gage bors 


expectant audience of to-morrow’s prayer and sermon. 
No eye could see him, save that ever-wakeful one which 
had seen him in his closet, wielding the bloody scourge. 
Why, then, had- he come hither? Was it but the 
mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed, but in 
which his soul trifled with itself! A mockery at which 
angels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced, with 
jeering laughter! He had been driven hither by the 
impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, 
and whose own sister and closely linked companion 
was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, 
with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse 
had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. Poor, 
miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to 
burden itself with crime? Crime is for the 1ron-nerved, 
who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it press 
too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for 
a good purpose, and fling it off at once! This feeble 
and most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet con- 
tinually did one thing or another, which intertwined, 
in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven- 
defying guilt and vain repentance. 

And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this 
vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was overcome 
with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were 
gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right 
over his heart. On that spot, in very truth, there was, 
ind there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous 
tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, 
or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud; an 
outcry that went pealing through the night, and was 
beaten back from one house to another, and reverber- 
ated from the hills in the background; as 1f a company 


THE MINISTER’S VIGIL 164 


of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, 
had made a plaything of the sound, and were ban ovans 
it to and fro. 

“Tt is done!” muttered the minister, covering his face 
with his hands. “The whole town will awake, and 
hurry forth, and find me here!’ 

But it was not so. The shriek had perhaps sounded 
with a far greater power, to his own startled ears, than 
it actually possessed. The town did not awake; or, if 
it did, the drowsy slumberers mistook the cry either 
for something frightful in a dream, or for the noise 
of witches; whose voices, at that period, were often 
heard to pass over the settlements or lonely cottages, as 
they rode with Satan through the air. The clergyman, 
therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncov- 
ered his eyes and looked abott him. At one of the 
chamber-windows of Governor Bellingham’s mansion, 
which stood at some distance, on the line of another 
street, he beheld the appearance of the old magistrate 
himself, with a lamp in his hand, a white nightcap on 
his head, and a long white gown enveloping his figure. 
He looked like a ghost, evoked unseasonably from the 
grave. The cry had evidently startled him. At an- 
other window of the same house, moreover, appeared 
old Mistress Hibbins, the Governor’s sister, also with 
a lamp, which, even thus far off, revealed the expres- 
sion of her sour and discontented face. She thrust 
forth her head from the lattice, and looked anxiously 
upward. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this vener- 
able witch-lady had heard Mr. Dimmesdale’s outcry, 
and interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes and 
reverberations, as the clamor of the fiends and night- 


170 THE SCARLET LETTER 


hags, with whom she was well known to make excur- 
sions into the forest. 

Detecting the gleam of Governor Bellingham’s lamp, 
the old lady quickly extinguished her own, and van- 
ished. Possibly, she went up among the clouds. The 
minister saw nothing further of her motions. The 
magistrate, after a wary observation of the darkness, 
—into which, nevertheless, he could see but little fur- 
ther than he might into a mill-stone,—retired from 
the window. 

The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes, 
however, were soon greeted by a little, glimmering light, 
which, at first a long way off, was approaching up the 
street. It threw a gleam of recognition on here a post, 
and there a garden-fence, and here a latticed window- 
pane, and there a pump, with its full trough of water, 
and here, again, an arched door of oak, with an iron 
knocker, and a rough log for the doorstep. The Rev- 
erend Mr. Dimmesdale noted all these minute particu- 
Jars, even while firmly convinced that the doom of his 
existence was stealing onward, in the footsteps which 
he now heard; and that the gleam of the lantern would 
fall upon him, in a few moments more, and reveal his 
long-hidden secret. As the light drew nearer, he be- 
held, within its illuminated circle, his brother clergy- 
man,—or, to speak more accurately, his professional 
father, as well as highly valued friend,—the Reverend 
Mr. Wilson; who, as Mr. Dimmesdale now conjectured, 
had been praying at the bedside of some dying man. 
And so he had. The good old minister came freshly 
from the death-chamber of Governor Winthrop, who 
had passed from earth to heaven within that very hour. 
And now, surrounded, like the saint-like personages of 


TEE MINISTERS VIGEL 171 


olden times, with a radiant halo, that glorified him 
amid this gloomy night of sin,—as if the departed 
Governor had left him an inheritance of his glory, or 
as if he had caught upon himself the distant shine of 
the celestial city, while looking thitherward to see the 
triumphal pilgrim pass within its gates,—now, in short, 
good Father Wilson was moving homeward, aiding his 
footsteps with a lighted lantern! The glimmer of this 
luminary suggested the above conceits to Mr. Dimmes- 
dale, who smiled,—nay, almost laughed at him,—and 
then wondered if he were going mad. 

As the Reverend Mr. Wilson passed beside the scaf- 
fold, closely muffling his Geneva cloak about him with 
one arm, and holding the lantern before his breast with 
the other, the minister could hardly restrain himself 
from speaking. 

“A good evening to you, venerable Father Wilson! 
Come up hither, I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour 
with me!” 

Good heavens! Had Mr. Dimmesdale actually 
spoken? For one instant, he believed that these words 
had passed his lips. But they were uttered only within 
his imagination. The venerable Father Wilson con- | 
tinued to step slowly onward, looking carefully at the © 
muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning 
his head towards the guilty platform. When the light 
of the glimmering lantern had faded quite away, the 
minister discovered, by the faintness which came over 
him, that the last few moments had been a crisis of 
terrible anxiety; although his mind had made an in- 
voluntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid 
playfulness. 

Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the hu- 


et 2 DELESS Gai relies feel ie | 


morous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of 
his thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the 
unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted 
whether he should-be able to descend the steps of the 
scaffold. Morning would break, and find him there. 
The neighborhood would begin to rouse itself. The 
earliest riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would 
perceive a vaguely defined figure aloft on the place of 
shame; and, half crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, 
would go, knocking from door to door, summoning all 
the people to behold the ghost—as he needs must think 
it—of some defunct transgressor. A dusky tumult 
would flap its wings from one house to another. Then 
—the morning light still waxing stronger—old patri- 
archs would rise up in great haste, each in his flannel 
gown, and matronly dames, without pausing to put off 
their night-gear. The whole tribe of decorous per- 
sonages, who had never heretofore been seen with a 
single hair of their heads awry, would start into public 
view, with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. 
Old Governor Bellingham would come grimly forth, 
with his King James’s ruff fastened askew ; and Mistress 
Hibbins, with some twigs of the forest clinging to her 
skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly 
got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good 
Father Wilson, too, after spending half the night at 
a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, 
out of his dreams about the glorified saints. Hither, 
likewise, would come the elders and deacons of Mr. 
Dimmesdale’s church, and the young virgins who so 
idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for him 
in their white bosoms; which now, by the by, in their 
hurry and confusion, they would scantly have given 


THE MINISTER’S VIGIL 173 


themselves time to cover with their kerchiefs. All 
people, in a word, would come stumbling over their 
thresholds, and turning up their amazed and horror- 
stricken visages around the scaffold. Whom would 
they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his 
brow? Whom, but the Reverend Arthur Dimmes- 
dale, half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, 
and standing where Hester Prynne had stood! 

Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, 
the minister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, 
burst into a great peal of laughter. It was immedi- 
ately responded to by a light, airy, childish laugh, in 
which, with a thrill of the heart,—but he knew not 
whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute,—he 
recognized the tones of little Pearl. 

} Pearl !>) Eittle’ Pearl!” cried he after a momentis 
pause; then, suppressing his voice,—‘‘Hester! Hester 
Prynne! Are you there?”’ 

"Yes; it is) Hester Prynne!” she replied, in a tone 
of surprise; and the minister heard her footsteps ap- 
proaching from the sidewalk, along which she had been 
passing. “It is I, and my little Pearl.” 

“Whence. come you, Hester!’ asked the minister. 
“What sent you hither?” 

“T have been watching at a death-bed,’ answered 
Hester Prynne,—‘“at Governor Winthrop’s death-bed, 
and have taken his measure for a robe, and am now 
going homeward to my dwelling.” 

“Come up hither, Hester, thou and little Pearl,” said 
the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. “Ye have both been 
here before, but I was not with you. Come up hither 
once again, and we will stand all three together!” 

She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the 


ew 


174 THE SCARLET LETTER 


platform, holding little Pearl by the hand. The min- 
ister felt for the child’s other hand, and took it. The 
moment that he did so, there came what seemed a 
tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, 
pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying 
through all his veins, as if the mother and the child 
were communicating their vital warmth to his half- 
terpid system. The three formed an electric chain. 

“Minister !’ whispered little Pearl. 

“What wouldst thou say, child?” asked Mr. Dimmes- 
Peaale: 

“Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to- 
morrow noontide?”’ inquired Pearl. 

“Nay; not so, my little Pearl,” answered the min- 
ister; for with the new energy of the moment, all the 
dread of public exposure, that had so long been the 
anguish of his life, had returned upon him; and he 
was already trembling at the conjunction in which— 
with a strange joy, nevertheless—he now found him- 
self. “Not so, my child. I shall, indeed, stand with 
thy mother and thee, one other day, but not to-morrow.” 

Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. 
But the minister held it fast. 

“A moment longer, my child!’ said he. 

“But wilt thou promise,” asked Pearl, “to take my 
hand and mother’s hand, to-morrow noontide?” 

“Not then, Pearl,’ said the minister, “but another 
time.”’ 

“And what other time?” persisted the child. 

“At the great judgment day,” whispered the min- 
ister,—and, strangely enough, the sense that he was a 
professional teacher of the truth impelled him to an- 
swer the child so. ‘Then, and there, before the judg- 


THE MINISTER’S VIGIL 175 


ment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I must stand 
together. But the daylight of this world shall not see 
our meeting!” 

Pearl laughed again. 

But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, a 
light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. 
It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which 
the night-watcher may so often observe, burning out 
to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So 
powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illumi- 
nated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and 
earth. The great vault brightened, like the dome of 
an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of 
the street, with the distinctness of mid-day, but also 
with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar 
objects by an unaccustomed light. The wooden houses, 
with their jutting stories and quaint gable-peaks; the 
doorsteps and thresholds, with the early grass spring- 
ing up about them; the garden-plots, black with freshly- 
turned earth; the wheel-track, little worn, and, even 
in the market-place, margined with green on either 
side,—all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect 
that seemed to give another moral interpretation to 
the things of this world than they had ever borne 
before. And there stood the minister, with his hand 
over his heart; and Hester Prynne, with the embroid- 
ered letter glimmering on her bosom; and little Pearl, 
herself a symbol, and the connecting link between those 
two. They stood in the noon of that strange and 
solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal 
all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who 
belong to one another. 

There was witchcraft in little Pearl’s eyes, and her 


176 RHE SCARE ER EVEie rs 


face, as she glanced upward at the minister, wore that 
naughty smile which made its expression frequently 
so elfish. She withdrew her hand from Mr. Dimmes- 
dale’s, and pointed across the street. But he clasped 
both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes to- 
wards the zenith. 

Nothing was more common, in those days, than to 
interpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural 
phenomena, that occurred with less regularity than the 
rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revelations 
from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing spear, a 
sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows, seen in 
the midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pesti- 
lence was known to have been foreboded by a shower 
of crimson light. We doubt whether any marked event, 
for good or evil, ever befell New England, from its 
settlement down to Revolutionary times, of which the 
inhabitants had not been previously warned by some 
spectacle of this nature. Not seldom, it had been seen 
by multitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested 
on the faith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the 
wonder through the colored, magnifying, and distort- 
ing medium of his imagination, and shaped it more 
distinctly in his afterthought. It was, indeed, a majes- 
tic idea, that the destiny of nations should be revealed, 
in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. A 
scroll so wide might not be deemed too expansive for 
Providence to write a people’s doom upon. The belief 
was a favorite one with our forefathers, as betokening 
that their infant commonwealth was under a celestial 
guardianship of peculiar intimacy and strictness. But 
what shall we say, when an individual discovers a reve- 
dation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast 


THE MINISTER'S, VIGIL 177 


sheet of record! In such a case, it could only be the 
symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a 
man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, in- 
tense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over 
the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself 
should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul’s 
history and fate! 

We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his 
own eye and heart, that the minister, looking upward 
to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense 
letter,—the letter A,—marked out in lines of dull red 
light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at 
that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud; 
but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave 
it; or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another’s 
guilt might have seen another symbol in it. 

There was a singular circumstance that characterized 
Mr. Ditmmesdale’s psychological state at this moment. 
All the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, 
nevertheless, perfectly aware that little Pearl was point- 
ing her finger towards old Roger Chillingworth, who 
stood at no great distance from the scaffold. The min- 
ister appeared to see him, with the same glance that 
discerned the miraculous letter. To his features, as to 
all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new ex- 
pression; or it might well be that the physician was not 
careful then, as at all other times, to hide the malev 
olence with which he looked upon his victim. Cer 
tainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed 
the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Hester 
Prynne and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then 
might Roger Chillingworth have passed with them for 
the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl 


iw 


178 THE SCARLET LETLER 


to claim his own. So vivid was the expression, or so 
intense the minister’s perception of it, that it seemed 
still to remain painted on the darkness, after the meteor 
had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all 
things else were at once annihilated. 

“Who is that man, Hester?’ gasped Mr. Dimmes- 
dale, overcome with terror. “I shiver at him! Dost 
thou know the man? I hate him, Hester!’ 

She remembered her oath, and was silent. 

“T tell thee, my soul shivers at him!’ muttered the 
minister again. “Whois he? Whois he? Canst thou 
do nothing for me? I have a nameless horror of the 
man!’ 

“Minister,” said little Pearl, “‘I can tell thee who he 
is!” 

“Quickly, then, child!” said the minister, bending his 
ear close to her lips. “Quickly!—and as low as thou 
canst whisper.” 

Pearl mumbled something into his ear, that sounded, 
indeed, like human language, but was only such gib- 
berish as children may be heard amusing themselves 
with, by the hour together. At all events, if it involved 
any secret information in regard to old Roger Chilling- 
worth, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergy- 
man, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind. 
The elfish child then laughed aloud. 

“Dost thou mock me now?” said the minister. 

“Thou wast not bold!—thou wast not true!”—an- 
swered the child. “Thou wouldst not promise to take 
my nand, and mother’s hand, to-morrow noontide!’ 

“Worthy Sir,” answered the physician, who had now 
advanced to the foot of the platform. ‘Pious Master 
Dimmesdale, can this be you? Well, well, indeed! We 


THE MINISTER’S VIGIL 179 


men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need 
to be straitly looked after! We dream in our waking 
_ moments, and walk in our sleep. Come, good Sir, and 
my dear friend, I pray you, let me lead you home!” 

“How knewest thou that I was here?” asked the min- 
ister, fearfully. 

“Verily, and in good faith,” answered Roger Chil- 
lingworth, “I knew nothing of the matter. I had spent 
the better part of the night at the bedside of the wor- 
shipful Governor Winthrop, doing what my poor skill 
might to give him ease. He going home to a better 
world, I, likewise, was on my way homeward, when 
this strange light shone out. Come with me, I be- 
seech you, Reverend Sir; else you will be poorly able 
to do Sabbath duty to-morrow. Aha! see now, how 
they trouble the brain,—these books !—these books! 
You should study less, good Sir, and take a little pas- 
time; or these night whimseys will grow upon you.” 

“T will go home with you,” said Mr. Dimmesdale. 

With a chill despondency, like one awaking, all nerve- 
less, from an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the 
physician, and was led away. 

Whe next day; however, being the Sabbath, he 
preached a discourse which was held to be the richest 
and most powerful, and the most replete with heavenly 
influences, that had ever proceeded from his lips. Souls, 
it is said more souls than one, were brought to the truth 
by the efficacy of that sermon, and vowed within them- 
selves to cherish a holy gratitude towards Mr. Dimmes- — 
dale throughout the long hereafter. But, as he came 
down the pulpit steps, the gray-bearded sexton met him, 
holding up a black glove, which the minister recognized 
as his own. 


180 DLE S CR ie Tia agit 


“Tt was found,” said the sexton, “this morning, on 
the scaffold where evil-doers are set up to public shame. 
Satan dropped it there, I take it, intending a scurrilous 
jest against your reverence. But, indeed, he was blind 
and foolish, as he ever and always is. A pure hand 
needs no glove to cover it!” 

“Thank you, my good friend,” said the minister, 
gravely, but startled at heart; for so confused was his 
remembrance, that he had almost brought himself to 
look at the events of the past night as visionary. “Yes, 
it seems to be my glove, indeed!” 

“And, since Satan saw fit to steal it, your reverence 
must needs handle him without gloves, henceforward,” 
remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. “But did 
your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last 
night?—a great red letter in the sky,—the letter A, 
which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our 
good Governor Winthrop was made an angel this past 
night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be 
some notice thereof!” 

“No,” answered the minister, “I had not heard of it.” 


XII 
ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 


In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, 
Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which 
she found the clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed 
absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased 
into more than childish weakness. It grovelled help- 
less on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties 
retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps ac- 
quired a morbid energy, which disease only could have 
given them. With her knowledge of a train of cir- 
cumstances hidden from all others, she could readily 
infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own 
conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to 
bear, and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale’s 
well-being and repose. Knowing what this poor, 
fallen man had once been, her whole soul was moved 
by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed 
to her,—the outcast woman,—for support against his 
instinctively discovered enemy. She -decided, more- 
over, that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little ac- 
customed, in her long seclusion from society, to meas- 
ure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard 
external to herself, Hester saw—or seemed to see—that 
there lay a responsibility upon her, in reference to the 
clergyman, which she owed to no other, nor to the 
whole world besides. The links that united her to the 


rest of human kind—links of flowers, or silk, or gold, 
181 


182 THE SOARD BY SR iiate 


or whatever the material—had all been broken. Here 
was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he 
nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought 
along with it its obligations. 

Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the 
same position in which we beheld her during the ear- 
lier periods of her ignominy. Years had come and 
gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother, 
with the scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its 
fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object 
to the townspeople. As is apt to be the case when a 
person stands out in any prominence before the com- 
munity, and, at the same time, interferes neither with 
public nor individual interests and conveniences, a spe- 
cies of general regard had ultimately grown up in ref- 
erence to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human 
nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into 
play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a 
gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to 
love, unless the change be impeded by a continually 
new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. In 
this matter of Hester Prynne, there was neither irri- 
tation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the 
public, but submitted, uncomplainingly, to its worst 
usage; she made no claim upon it, in requital for what 
she suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. 
Then, also, the blameless purity of her life during all 
these years in which she had been set apart to infamy, 
was reckoned largely in her favor. With nothing now 
to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, 
and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could 
only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought 
back the poor wanderer to its paths. 


ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 183 


It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put 
forward even the humblest title to share in the world’s 
privileges,—further than to breathe the common air, 
and earn daily bread for little Pearl and herself by the 
faithful labor of her hands,—she was quick to ac- 
knowledge her sisterhood with the race of man, when- 
ever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as 
she to give of her little substance to every demand of 
poverty; even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw 
back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly 
to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the 
fingers that could have embroidered a monarch’s robe. 
None so _ self-devoted as Hester, when pestilence 
stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity, 
indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast 
of society at once found her place. She came, not as 
a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household 
that was darkened by trouble; as if its gloomy twilight 
were a medium in which she was entitled to hold inter- 
course with her fellow-creatures. There glimmered 
the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly 
ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of 
the sick-chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in 
the sufferer’s hard extremity, across the verge of time. 
It had shown him where to set his foot,‘ while the light 
of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of 
futurity could reach him. In such emergencies, Hes- 
ter’s nature showed itself warm and rich; a well-spring 
of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, 
and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its 
badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head 
that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of 
Mercy; or, we may rather say, the world’s heavy hand 


184 BV SCARLET (CE Ia iis 


had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she 
looked forward to this result. The letter was the sym- 
bol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in 
her,—so much power to do, and power to sympathize, 
—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A 
by its original signification. They said that it meant 
Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s 
strength, 

It was only the darkened house that could contain 
her. When sunshine came again, she was not there. 
Her shadow had faded across the threshold. The 
helpful inmate had departed, without one backward 
glance to gather up the. meed of gratitude, if any were 
in the hearts of those whom she had served so zeal- 
ously. Meeting them in the street, she never raised 
her head to receive their greeting. If they were reso- 
lute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarlet let- 
ter, and passed on. This might be pride, but was so 
like humility, that it produced all the softening influ- 
ence of the latter quality on the public mind. The 
public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of deny- 
ing common justice, when too strenuously demanded as 
a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than 
justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to 
have it made, entirely to its generosity. Interpreting 
Hester Prynne’s deportment as an appeal of this na- 
ture, society was inclined to show its former victim a 
more benign countenance than she cared to be favored 
with, or, perchance, than she deserved. 

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the 
community, were longer in acknowledging the influ- 
ence of Hester’s good qualities than the people. The 


ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 185 


prejudices which they shared in common with the lat- 
ter were fortified in themselves by an iron framework 
of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labor to expel 
them. Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid 
wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the 
due course of years, might grow to be an expression 
of almost benevolence. Thus it was with the men of 
rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the 
guardianship of the public morals. Individuals in 
private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester 
Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to 
look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that 
one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a 
penance, but of her many good deeds since. “Do you 
see that woman with the embroidered badge?’ they 
would say to strangers. “It is our Hester,—the 
town’s own Hester, who is so kind to the poor, so help- 
ful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!” Then, 
it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the 
very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of 
another, would constrain them to whisper the black 
scandal of bygone years. It was none the less a fact, 
however, that, in the eyes of the very men who spoke 
thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a 
nun’s bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of 
sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid 
all peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it would have 
kept her safe. It was reported, and believed by many, 
that an Indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, 
and that the missile struck it, but fell harmless to the 
ground. 

The effect of the symbol—or, rather, of the position 
in respect to society that was indicated by it—on the 


186 HAE SCARLET in iiks, 


mind of Hester Prynne herself, was powerful and 
peculiar. All the light and graceful foliage of her 
character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, 
and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh 
outline, which might have been repulsive, had she pos- 
sessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. Even 
the attractiveness of her person had undergone a simi- 
Jar change. It might be partly owing to the studied 
austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demon- 
stration in her manners. It was a sad transformation, 
too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had either, been 
cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not 
a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. 
It was due in part to all these causes, but still more to 
something else, that there seemed to be no longer any- 
thing in Hester’s face for Love to dwell upon; nothing 
in Hester’s form, though majestic and statue-like, that 
Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; 
nothing in Hester’s bosom, to make it ever again the 
pillow of Affection. Some attribute had departed 
from her, the permanence of which had been essential 
to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and 
such the stern development, of the feminine character 
and person, when the woman has encountered, and 
lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If 
she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the 
tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and 
the outward semblance is the same—crushed so 
deeply into her heart that it can never show itself 
more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory. She 
who has once been woman, and ceased to be so, might 
at any moment become a woman again if there were 
only the magic touch to effect the transfiguration. 


ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 187 


We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever after- 
wards so touched, and so transfigured. 

Much of the marble coldness of Hester’s impres- 
sion was to be attributed to the circumstance, that her 
life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and 
feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the world,— 
alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little 
Pearl to be guided and protected,—alone, and hopeless 
of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned 
to consider it desirable,—she cast away the fragments 
of a broken chain. The world’s law was no law for 
her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, 
newly emancinated, had taken a more active and a 
wider range than for many centuries before. Men 
of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men 
bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged—not 
actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was 
their most real abode—the whole system of ancient 
prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient prin- 
ciple. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She as- 
sumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough 
on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our fore- 
fathers, had they known it, would have held to bea 
deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet 
letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, 
_ thoughts visited her, such as dared to enter no other 
dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that would 
have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, 
could they have been seen so much as knocking at her 
door. 

It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most 
boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude 


188 Fee Bm oy OU ces ed aad AS Bd od BTR ad x 


to the external regulations of society. The thought 
suffices them, without investing itself in the flesh and 
blood of action. So it seemed to be with Hester. 
Yet, had little Pearl never come to her from the spirit- 
ual world, it might have been far otherwise. Then, she 
might have come down to us in history, hand in hand 
with Anne Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious 
sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a 
prophetess. She might, and not improbably would, 
have suffered death from the stern tribunals of the 
period, for attempting to undermine the foundations 
of the Puritan establishment. But, in the education 
of her child, the mother’s enthusiasm of thought had 
something to wreak itself upon. Providence, in the 
person of this little girl, had assigned to Hester’s 
charge the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be 
cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. 
Everything was against her. The world was hostile. 
The child’s own nature had something wrong in it, 
which continually betokened that she had been born 
amiss,—the effluence of her mother’s lawless pas- 
sion,—and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness 
of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor 
little creature had been born at all. 

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her 
mind, with reference to the whole race of womanhood. 
Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest 
among them? As concerned her own individual ex- 
istence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and 
dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to specula- 
tion, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, 
yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a 





ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 189 


hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole 
system of society is to be torn down, and built up 
anew. ‘Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its | 
long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is 
to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed 
to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. 
Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman 
cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms, 
until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier 
change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein 
she has her truest life, will be found to have evapo- 
rated. A woman never overcomes these problems by 
any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved, 
or only in one way. If her heart chance to come upper- 
most, they vanish. Thus, Hester Prynne, whose heart 
had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered with- 
out a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind: now turned 
aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting 
back from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly 
scenery all around her, and a home and comfort no- 
where. At times, a fearful doubt strove to possess her 
soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl at once 
to heaven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal 
Justice should provide. 

The scarlet letter had not done its office. 

Now, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. 
Dimmesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given her 
a new theme oi reflection, and held up to her an object 
that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for 
its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery 
beneath which the minister struggled, or, to speak more 
accurately, had ceased to struggle. She saw that he 
stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already 


Igo THE SCARLEINDE PPE 


stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt, that, 
whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret 
sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused 
into it by the hand that proffered relief. A secret en- 
emy had been continually by his side, under the sem- 
blance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself 
of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with 
the delicate springs of Mr. Dimmesdale’s nature. Hes- 
ter could not but ask herself, whether there had not 
originally been a defect of truth, courage, and loyalty, 
on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown 
into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded, 
and nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justifi- 
cation lay in the fact, that she had been able to discern 
no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than 
had overwhelmed herself, except by acquiescing in 
Roger Chillingworth’s scheme of disguise. Under 
that impulse, she had made her choice, and had chosen, 
as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative of 
the two. She determined to redeem her error, so far 
as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of 
hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so in- 
adequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on that 
night, abased by sin, and half maddened by the igno- 
miny, that was still new, when they had talked together 
in the prison-chamber. She had climbed her way, since 
then, to a higher point. The old man, on the other 
hand, had brought himself nearer to her level, or per- 
haps below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for. — 

In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former — 
husband, and do what might be in her power for the — 
rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set — 
his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. One © 





ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER IQI 


afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of the 
peninsula, she beheld the old physician, with a basket 
on one arm, and a staff in the other hand, stooping 
along the ground, in quest of roots and herbs to con- 
coct his medicines witha] 


XTV\ 
HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 


Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin 
of the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea- 
weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder 
gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird, 
and, making bare her small white feet, went pattering 
along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she 
came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, 
left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Pearl to see 
her face in. Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with 
dark, glistening curls around her head, and an elf- 
smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid, whom 
Pearl, having no other playmate, invited to take her 
hand, and run a race with her. But the visionary little 
maid, on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say,— 
“This is a better place! Come thou into the pool!” 
And Pearl, stepping in, mid-leg deep, beheld her own 
white feet at the bottom; while, out of a still lower 
depth, came the gieam of a kind of fragmentary smile, 
floating to and fro in the agitated water. 

Meanwhile her mother had accosted the physician. 

“T would speak a word with you,” said she,—“a 
word that concerns us much.” 

“Aha! and is it Mistress Hester that has a word 
for old Roger Chillingworth?” answered he, raising 


himself from his stooping posture. “With all my 
192 





HESRER AND: TH E- PHYSICIAN, 193 


heart! Why, Mistress, I hear good tidings of you on 
all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve, a magis- 
trate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your 
affairs, Mistress Hester, and whispered me that there 
had been question concerning you in the council. It 
was debated whether or no, with safety to the common 
weal, yonder scarlet letter might be taken off your 
bosom. On my life, Hester, I made my entreaty to 
the worshipful magistrate that it might be done forth- 
with!” 

“It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take 
off this badge,” calmly replied Hester. “Were I 
worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own 
nature, or be transformed into something that should 
speak a different purport.” 

“Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better,’’ rejoined 
he. “A woman must needs follow her own fancy, 
touching the adornment of her person. The letter is 
gayly embroidered, and shows right bravely on your 
bosom!” 

All this while, Hester had been looking steadily at 
the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder- 
smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought 
upon him within the past seven years. It was not so 
much that he had grown older; for though the traces 
of advancing life were visible, he wore his age well, 
and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness. But 
the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, 
calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered 
in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeedea 
by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully 
guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose 


194 THE SCARLET LETTER 


to mask this expression with a smile; but the latter 
played him false, and flickered over his visage so de- 
risively, that the spectator could see his blackness all 
the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a 
glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the old man’s 
soul were on fire, and kept on smouldering duskily 
within his breast, until, by some casual puff of pas- 
sion, it was blown into a momentary flame. This he 
repressed, as speedily as possible, and strove to look as 
if nothing of the kind had happened. 

In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking 
evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into 
a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, 
undertake a devil’s office. This unhappy person had 
effected such a transformation, by developing himself, 
for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full 
of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and add- 
ing fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and 
gloated over. 

The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne’s bosom. 
Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which 
came partly home to her. 

“What see you in my face,’ asked the physician, 
“that you look at it so earnestly ?” 

“Something that would make me weep, if there were 
any tears bitter enough for it,’ answered she. “But 
let it pass! It is of yonder miserable man that I would 
_ speak.” 

“And what of him?” cried Roger Chillingworth, 
eagerly, as if he loved the topic, and were glad of an 
opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom 
he could make a confidant. ‘‘Not to hide the truth, 
Mistress Hester, my thoughts happen just now to be 


WES RAN DOTA PHY STOLAN | oro 


busy with the gentleman. So speak freely, and I will 
make answer.” 

“When we last spake together,’”’ said Hester, “now 
seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a prom: 
ise of secrecy, as touching the former relation betwixt 
yourself and me. As the life and good fame of yon- 
der man were in your hands, there seemed no choice 
to me, save to be silent, in accordance with your be- 
hest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I 
thus bound myself; for, having cast off all duty towards 
other human beings, there remained a duty towards 
him; and something whispered me that I was betraying 
it, in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since that 
day, no man is so near to him as you. You tread be- 
hind his every footstep. You are beside him, sleeping 
and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow 
and rankle in his heart! Your clutch is on his l1fe, 
and you cause him to die daily a living death; and still 
he knows you not. In permitting this, I have surely 
acted a false part by the only man to whom the power 
was left me to be true!” 

“What choice had you?’ asked Roger Chilling- 
worth. “My finger, pointed at this man, would have 
hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon,—thence, 
peradventure, to the gallows!’ 

“Tt had been better so!” said Hester Prynne. 

“What evil have I done the man?” asked Roger 
Chillingworth again. “TI tell thee, Hester Prynne, the 
richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch 
could not have bought such care as I have wasted on 
this miserable priest! But for my aid, his life would 
have burned away in torments, within the first two 
years after the perpetration of his crime and thine 


106 THE SCARLET LETTER 


For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could 
have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy 
scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret! But 
enough! What art can do, I have exhausted on him. 
That he now breathes, and creeps about on earth, is 
owing all to me!” 

“Better he had died at once!” said Hester Prynne. 

“Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!” cried old Roger 
Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze 
out before her eyes. “Better had he died at once! 
Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. 
And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has 
been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwell- 
ing always upon him like a curse. He knew, by some 
spiritual sense,—for the Creator never made another 
being so sensitive as this,—he knew that no friendly 
hand was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye 
was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, 
and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand 
were mine! With the superstition common to his 
brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, 
to be tortured with frightful dreams, and desperate 
thoughts, the sting of remorse, and despair of pardon; 
as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. 
But it was the constant shadow of my presence !—the 
closest propinquity of the man whom he had most 
vilely wronged!—and who had grown to exist only 
by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, 
indeed !—he did not err!—there was a fiend at his el- 
bow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has 
become a fiend for his especial torment!” 

The unfortunate physician, while uttering these 
words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he 


HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 107 


had beheld some frightful shape, which he could not 
recognize, usurping the place of his own image in a 
glass. It was one of those moments—which sometimes 
occur only at the interval of years when a man’s moral 
aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind’s eye. Not 
improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he 
did now. 

“Hast thou not tortured him enough?” said Hester, 
noticing the old man’s look. ‘Has he not paid thee 
all P”’ 

“No!—no! He has but increased the debt!’ an- 
swered the physician; and as he proceeded, his manner 
lost its fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom. 
“Dost thou remember me, Hester, as I was nine years 
agone? Even then, I was in the autumn of my days, 
nor was it the early autumn. But all my life had been 
made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, 
bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own 
knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object 
was but casual to the other,—faithfully for the ad- 
vancement of human welfare. No life had been more 
peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so rich 
with benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me? 
Was I not, though you might deem me cold, never- 
theless a man thoughtful for others, craving little for 
himself,—kind, true, just, and of constant, if not warm 
affections? Was I not all this?” 

“All this, and more,” said Hester. 

“And what am I now?” demanded he, looking into 
her face, and permitting the whole evil within him to 
be written on his features. “I have already told thee 
what lam! A fiend! Who made me so?” 

“It was myself!” cried Hester, shuddering. “It was 


198 TORT ER SCAT ICE Tie hy Tubal 


I, not less than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself 
pn me?” 

“T have left thee to the scarlet letter,” replied Roger 
Chillingworth. “If that have not avenged me, I can 
(lo no more!” 

He laid his finger on it, with a smile. 

“It has avenged thee!’ answered Hester Prynne. 

“T judged no less,” said the physician. “And now, 
what wouldst thou with me touching this man?” 

“T must reveal the secret,” answered Hester, firmly. 
“He must discern thee in thy true character. What 
may be the result, I know not. But this long debt of 
confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I 
have been, shall at length be paid. So far as concerns 
the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and 
his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in thy 
hands. Nor do I,—whom the scarlet letter has disci- 
plined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron, 
entering into the soul—nor do I perceive such ad- 
vantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly empti- 
ness, that I shall stoop to implore thy mercy. Do with 
him as thou wilt! There is no good for him,—no good 
for me,—no good for thee! There is no good for little 
Pearl! There is no path to guide us out of this dismal 
maze!” 

“Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee!” said Roger 
Chillingworth, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration 
too; for there was a quality almost majestic in the 
despair which she expressed. “Thou hadst great ele- 
ments. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a 
better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity 
thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature!” 

“And I thee,” answered Hester Prynne, “for the 


HESTER ANDTHE PHYSICIAN ‘199 


hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a 
fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once 
more human? If not for his sake, then doubly for 
thine own! Forgive, and leave his further retribution 
to the Power that claims it! I said, but now, that 
there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, 
who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze 
of evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt 
wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not so! 
There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since 
thou hast been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will 
to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? 
Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?” 

“Peace, Hester, peace!’”’ replied the old man, with 
gloomy sternness. “It is not granted me to pardon. 
I have no such power as thou tellest me of. My old 
faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains 
all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry 
thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that mo- 
ment, it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have 
wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical 
illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a 
fiend’s office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the 
black flower blossom as it may! Now go thy ways, 
and deal as thou wilt with yonder man.” 

He waved his hand, and betook himself again ta his 
employment of gathering herbs. 


XV 
HESTER AND PEARL 


So Roger Chillingworth—a deformed old figure, 
with a face that haunted men’s memories longer than 
they liked—took leave of Hester Prynne, and went 
stooping away along the earth. He gathered here and 
there an herb, or grubbed up a root, and put it into 
the basket on his arm. His gray beard almost touched 
the ground, as he crept onward. Hester gazed after 
him a little while, looking with a half-fantastic curi- 
osity to see whether the tender grass of early spring 
would not be blighted beneath him, and show the 
wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across 
its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs 
they were, which the old man was so sedulous to gather. 
Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by 
the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous 
shrubs, of species hitherto unknown, that would start 
up under his fingers? Or might it suffice him that 
every wholesome growth should be converted into 
something deleterious and malignant at his touch? Did 
the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really 
fall upon him’ Or was there, as it rather seemed, a 
circle of ominous shadow moving along with his de- 
formity, whichever way he turned himself? And 


whither was he now going? Would he not suddenly 
200 


HESTER AND PEARL 201 


sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, 
where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly 
nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of 
vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all 
flourishing with hideous luxuriance? Or would he 
spread bat’s wings and flee away, looking so much the 
uglier the higher he rose towards heaven? 

“Be it sin or no,’ said Hester Prynne, bitterly, as 
she still gazed after him, “I hate the man!” 

She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could 
not overcome or lessen it. Attempting to do so, she 
thought of those long-past days, in a distant land, when 
he used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his 


study, and sit down in the firelight of their home, and > 


in the light of her nuptial smile. He needed to bask 
himself in that smile, he said, in order that the chill 
of so many lonely hours among his books might be 
taken off the scholar’s heart. Such scenes had once 
appeared not otherwise than happy; but now, as viewed 
through the dismal medium of her subsequent life, they 
classed themselves among her ugliest remembrances. 
She marvelled how such scenes could have been! She 
marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon 


to marry him! She deemed it her crime most to be | 


repented of that she had ever endured, and reciprocated, 
the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the 
smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his 
own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by 
Roger Chillingworth, than any which had since been 
done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no bet- 
ter, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by 
his side. 

“Ves, I hate him!’ repeated Hester, more bitterly 


Woe THE SCARLET LETTER 


than before. ‘He betrayed me! He has done me worse 
wrong than I did him!” 

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless 
they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! 
Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was 
Roger Chillingworth’s, when some mightier touch than 
their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to 
be reproached even for the calm content, the marble 
image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon 
her as the warm reality. But Hester ought long ago 
to have done with this injustice. What did it betoken? 
Had seven long years, under the torture of the scarlet 
letter, inflicted so much of misery, and wrought out 
no repentance ? 

The emotions of that brief space, while she stood 
gazing after the crooked figure of old Roger Chilling- 
worth, threw a dark light on Hester’s state of mind, 
revealing much that she might not otherwise have ac- 
knowledged to herself. 

He being gone, she summoned back her child. 

V Pearl) Little: Pearl! {/W here are yous 

Pearl, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had 
been at no loss for amusement while her mother talked 
with the old gatherer of herbs. At first, as already 
told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image in 
a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and— 
as it declined to venture—seeking a passage for herself 
into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable 
sky. Soon finding, however, that either she or the 
image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better 
pastime. She made little boats out of birch-bark, and 
freighted them with snail-shells, and sent out more 
ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in 


HOR AND EARL 203 


New England; but the larger part of them foundered 
near the shore. She seized a live horseshoe by the 
tail, and made prize of several five-fingers, and laid out 
a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. Then she took up 
the white foam, that streaked the line of the advancing 
tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering after it, 
with winged footsteps, to catch the great snow-flakes 
ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds, that 
fed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty child 
picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from 
rock to rock after these small sea-fowl, displayed re- 
markable dexterity in pelting them. One little gray 
bird, with a white breast, Pearl was almost sure, had 
been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken 
wing. But then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her 
sport; because it grieved her to have done harm to a 
little being that was as wild as the sea-breeze, or as 
wild as Pearl herself. 

Her final employment was to gather sea-weed, of 
various kinds, and make herself a scarf, or mantle, 
and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little 
mermaid. She inherited her mother’s gift for devis- 
ing drapery and costume. As the last touch to her 
mermaid’s garb, Pearl took some eel-grass, and* imi. 
tated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decora- 
tion with which she was so familiar on her mother’s. 
A letter,—the letter A,—but freshly green, instead of 
scarlet! The child bent her chin upon her breast, and 
contemplated this device with strange interest; even as 
if the one only thing for which she had been sent into 
the world was to make out its hidden import. 

“T wonder if mother will ask me what it means!” 
thought Pearl. 


204. DEVS GARE EI WER Tier: 


Just then, she heard her mother’s voice, and flitting 
along as lightly as one of the little sea-birds, appeared 
before Hester Prynne, dancing, laughing, and pointing 
her finger to the ornament upon her bosom. 

“My little Pearl,’’ said Hester, after a moment’s 
silence, “the green letter, and on thy childish bosom, 
has no purport. But dost thou know, my child, what 
' this letter means which thy mother is doomed to 
eater a 

“Yes, mother,” said the child., “Its the greatfletter 
A. Thou hast taught me in the horn-book.” 

Hester looked steadily into her little face; but, 
though there was that singular expression which she 
had so often remarked in her black eyes, she could 
not satisfy herself whether Pearl really attached any 
meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire to 
ascertain the point. 

“Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears 
this letter?” 

“Truly do I!’ answered Pearl, looking brightly into 
her mother’s face. “It is for the same reason that the 
minister keeps his hand over his heart!’ 

“And what reason is that?” asked Hester, half smil- 
ing at the absurd incongruity of the child’s observa- 
tion; but, on second thoughts, turning pale. “What 
has the letter to do with any heart, save mine ?”’ 

“Nay, mother, I have told all I know,” said Pearl, 
more seriously than she was wont to speak. “Ask yon- 
der old man whom thou hast been talking with! It 
may be he can tell. But in good earnest now, mother 
dear, what does this scarlet letter mean?—and why 
dost thou wear it on thy bosom?—and why does the 
minister keep his hand over his heart?” 


HESTER AND PEARL 205 


She took her mother’s hand in both her own, and 
gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was seldom 
seen it) her wild and capricious character. The thought 
occurred to Hester that the child might really be seek- 
ing to approach her with childlike confidence, and do- 
ing what she could, and as intelligently as she knew 
how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. It 
showed Pearl in an unwonted aspect. Heretofore, the 
mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a 
sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little 
other return than the waywardness of an April breeze; 
which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts 
of inexplicable passion, and is pettlant in its best of 
moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you 
take it to your bosom; in requital of which misde- 
meanors, it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, 
kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and 
play gently with your hair, and then be gone about its 
other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your 
heart. And this, moreover, was a mother’s estimate of 
the child’s disposition. Any other observer might have 
seen few but unamiable traits, and have given them a 
far darker coloring. But now the idea came strongly 
into Hester’s mind, that Pearl, with her remarkable 
precocity and acuteness, might already have approached 
the age when she could be made a friend, and intrusted 
with as much of her mother’s sorrows as could be im- 
parted, without irreverence either to the parent or the 
child. In the little chaos of Pearl’s character there 
might be seen emerging—and could have been, from 
the very first—the steadfast principles of an unflinch- 
ing courage,—an uncontrollable will,—a sturdy pride, 


206 TEES CARRIE IArE 


which might be disciplined into self-respect,—and a 
bitter scorn of many things, which, when examined, 
might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them. 
She possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and 
disagreeable, as are the richest flavors of unripe fruit. 
With all these sterling attributes, thought Hester, the 
evil which she inherited from her mother must be great 
indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish 
child. : 

Pearl’s inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma 
of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her 
being. From the earliest epoch of her conscious Iife, 
she had entered upon this as her appointed mission. 
Hester had often fancied that Providence had a design 
of justice and retribution, in endowing the child with 
this marked propensity; but never, until now, had she 
bethought herself to ask, whether, linked with that de- 
sign, there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy 
and beneficence. If little Pearl were entertained with 
faith and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an 
earthly child, might it not be her errand to soothe away 
the sorrow that lay cold in her mother’s heart, and 
converted it into a tomb ?’—and to help her to overcome 
the passion, once so wild, and even yet neither dead 
nor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb- 
like heart? 

Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in 
Hester’s mind, with as much vivacity of impression 
as if they had actually been whispered into her ear. 
And there was little Pearl, all this while holding her 
mother’s hand in both her own, and turning her face 
upward, while she put these searching questions, once, 
and again, and still a third time. 


HESTER AND PEARL 207 


“What does the letter mean, mother ?—and why dost 
thou wear it?—and why does the minister keep his 
hand over his heart?” 

“What shall I say?’ thought Hester to herself. 
“No! If this be the price of the child’s sympathy, I 
cannot pay it.” 

Then she spoke aloud. 

“Silly Pearl,” said she, “what questions are these? 
There are many things in this world that a child must 
not ask about. What know I of the minister’s heart? 
And as for the scarlet letter, I wear it for the sake of 
its gold-thread.” 

In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had 
never before been false to the symbol on her bosom. It 
may be that it was the talisman of a stern and severe, 
but yet a guardian spirit,;who now forsook her; as 
recognizing that, in spite of his strict watch over her 
heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some old one 
had never been expelled. As for little Pearl, the ear- 
nestness soon passed out of her face. 

But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. 
Two or three times, as her mother and she went home- 
ward, and as often at supper-time, and while Hester 
was putting her to bed, and once after she seemed to 
be fairly asleep, Pearl looked up, with mischief gleam. 
ing in her black eyes. 

“Mother,” said she, “what does the scarlet letter 
mean?” 

And the next morning, the first indication the child 
gave of being awake was by popping up her head from 
the pillow, and making that other inquiry, which she 
had so unaccountably connected with her investigations 
about the scarlet letter,— 


208 THEVSOARLE TALE Rise ke 


“Mother !—Mother!—Why does the minister keep 
his hand over his heart ?”’ 

“Hold thy tongue, naughty child!” answered her 
mother, with an asperity that she had never permitted 
to herself before. “Do not tease me, else I shall shut 
thee into the dark closet!” 


XVI 
A FOREST WALK 


HeEsTER PrRYNNE remained constant in her resolve 
to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk 
of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true char- 
acter of the man who had crept into his intimacy. For 
several days, however, she vainly sought an oppor- 
tunity of addressing him in some of the meditative 
walks which she knew him to be in the habit of taking, 
along the shores of the peninsula, or on the wooded 
hills of the neighboring country. There would have 
been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness 
of the clergyman’s good faine, had she visited him in 
his own study, where many a penitent, ere now, had 
confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one be- 
tokened by the scarlet letter. But, partly that she 
dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old 
Roger Chillingworth, and partly that her conscious 
heart imputed suspicion where none could have been 
felt, and partly that both the minister and she would 
need the whole wide‘world to breathe in, while they 
talked together,—{for all these reasons, Hester never 
thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than 
beneath the open sky. 

At last, while attending in a sick-chamber, whither 


the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale had been summoned to 
209 


210 THEVSCARLET VA TEER 


make a prayer, she learnt that he had gone, the day 
before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian 
converts. He would probably return, by a certain hour, 
in the afternoon of the morrow. SBetimes, therefore, 
the next day, Hester took little Pearl,—who was neces- 
sarily the companion of all her mother’s expeditions, 
however inconvenient her presence,—and set forth. 

The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from 
the peninsula to the mainland, was no other than a foot- 
path. It straggled onward into the mystery of the 
primeval forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, and 
stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed 
such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to Hes- 
ter’s mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in 
which she had so long been wandering. The day was 
chill and sombre. Overhead was a gray expanse of 
cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze; so that a 
gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be 
seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting 
cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of 
some long vista through the forest. The sportive sun- 
light—feebly sportive, at best, in the predominant pen- 
siveness of the day and scene—withdrew itself as they 
came nigh. and left the spots where it had danced the 
drearier, because they had hoped to find them bright. 

“Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not 
love vou. It runs away and hides itself, because it is 
afraid of something on your bosom. Now see! There 
it is, playing, a good way off. Stand you here, and let 
me run and catch it. JT am but a child. It will not flee 
from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!” 

“Nor ever will, my child, I hope,” said Hester. 

“And why not, mother?’ asked Pearl, stopping 


A POOREST! WALK Dey 


- short, just at the beginning of her race. ‘‘Will not it 
come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?” 

“Run away, child,’ answered her mother, ‘‘and catch 
the sunshine! It will soon be gone.” 

Peari set forth, at a great pace, and, as Hester smiled 
to perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood 
laughing in the midst of it, all brightened by its splen- 
dor, and scintillating with the vivacity excited by rapid 
motion. The light lingered about the lonely child, as if 
glad of such a playmate, until her mother had drawn 
almost nigh enough to step into the magic circle too. 

“Tt will go now,” said Pearl, shaking her head. 

“See!” answered Hester, smiling. “‘Now I can 
stretch out my hand, and grasp some of it.’ 

As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, 
to judge from the bright expression that was dancing 
on Pearl’s features, her mother could have fancied that 
the child had absorbed it into herself, and would give it 
forth again, with a gleam about her path, as they should 
plunge into some gloomier shade. There was no other 
attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of 
new and untransmitted vigor in Pearl’s nature, as this 
never-failing vivacity of spirits; she had not the disease 
of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter 
days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of 
their ancestors. Perhaps this too was a disease, and but 
the reflex of the wild energy with which Hester had 
fought against her sorrows before Pearl’s birth. It was 
certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic 
lustre to the child’s character. She wanted—what some 
people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply 
touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of 


212 PH BOSC Pel eT 


sympathy. But there was time enough yet for litttle - 
Pearl. 

“Come, my child!” said Hester, looking about her 
| from the spot where Pearl had stood still in the sun- 
shine. ‘We will sit down a little way within the wood, 
and rest ourselves.” 

“T am not aweary, mother,” replied the little girl. 
“But you may sit down, if you will tell me a story 
meanwhile.”’ 

“A story, child!” said Hester. ‘And about what?”’ 

“Oh, a story about the Black Man,” answered Pearl, 
taking hold of her mother’s gown, and looking up, half 
earnestly, half mischievously, into her face. “How he 
haunts this forest, and carries a book with him,—a big, 
heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black 
Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that 
meets him here among the trees; and they are to write 
their names with their own blood. And then he sets 
his mark on their bosoms! Didst thou ever meet the 
Black Man, mother?” 

‘And who told you this story, Pearl?’ asked her 
mother, recognizing a common superstition of the 
period. 

“Tt was the old dame in the chimney-corner, at the 
house where you watched last night,’ said the child. 
“But she fancied me asleep while she was talking of it. 
She said that a thousand and a thousand people had met 
him here, and had written in his book, and have his 
mark on them. And that ugly-tempered lady, old Mis- 
tress Hibbins, was one. And, mother, the old dame 
said that this scarlet letter was the Black Man’s mark 
on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou 
meetest him at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it 


A FOREST WALK 213 


true, mother? And dost thou go to meet him in the 
night-time ?”’ 

“Didst thou ever awake, and find thy mother gone?”’ 
asked Hester. 

“Not that I remember,” said the child. “If thou 
fearest to leave me in our cottage, thou mightest take 
me along with thee. I would very gladly go! But 
mother, tell me now! Is there such a Black Man? 
And didst thou ever meet him? And is this his mark?” 

“Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once tell thee?” 
asked her mother. 

“Ves, if thou tellest me all,” answered Pearl. 

“Once in my life I met the Black Man!” said her 
mother. ‘This scarlet letter is his mark!” 

Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into 
the wood to secure themselves from the observation of 
any casual passenger along the forest track. Here they 
sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss. which, at some 
epoch of the preceding century, had been a gigantic pine, 
with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade, and its 
head aloft in the upper atmosphere. It was a little dell 
where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn 
bank rising gently on either side, and a brook flowing 
through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowned 
leaves. The trees impending over it had flung down 
ereat branches, from time to time, which choked up the 
current and compelled it to form eddies and black depths 
at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier pas- 
sages, there appeared a channelway of pebbles, and 
brown sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along 
the course of the stream, they could catch the reflected 
light from its water, at some short distance within the 
forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilder- 


214 THES OAR LE Tees Tee 


ment of tree-trunks and underbrush, and here ana there 
a huge rock covered over with gray lichens. All these 
giant trees and bowlders of granite seemed intent on 
making a mystery of the course of this small brook; 
fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, 
it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest 
‘ whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth 
surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole on- 
ward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, sooth- 
ing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that 
was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew 
not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and 
events of sombre hue. 

“O brook! O foolish and tiresome little brook!” 
cried Pearl, after listening awhile to its talk. ‘Why art 
thou so sad? Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the 
time sighing and murmuring!” 

But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime 
among the forest-trees, had gone through so solemn an 
experience that it could not help talking about it, and 
seemed to have nothing else to say. Pearl resembled 
the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed 
from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed 
through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom But, 
unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and 
prattled airily along her course, 

“What does this sad little brook say, mother?” in- 
quired she. 

“Tf thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook 
might tell thee of it,” answered her mother, “even as it 
is telling me of mine! But now, Pearl, I hear a foot- 
step along the path, and the noise of one putting aside 


Ay PORES T  WALDK. ie aL 


the branches. J would have thee betake thyself to play, 
and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder.” 

“Ts it the Black Man?” asked Pearl. 

“Wilt thou go and play, child?” repeated her mother. 
“But do not stray far into the wood. And take heed 
that thou come at my first call.” 

“Yes, mother,’ answered Pearl. ‘But if it be the 
Black Man, wilt thou not let me stay a moment, and 
look at him, with his big book under His arm?” 

“Go, silly child!’ said her mother, impatiently. “It 
is no Black Man! Thou canst see him now, through 
the trees. It is the minister!” 

“And so it is!” said the child. “And, mother, he has 
his hand over his heart! Is it because, when the minis- 
ter wrote his name in the book, the Black Man set his 
mark in that place? But why does he not wear it out 
side his bosom, as thou dost, mother ?” 

“Go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt 
another time,” cried Hester Prynne. “But do not stray 
far. Keep where thou canst hear the babble of the 
brook.” 

The child went singing away, following up the cur- 
rent of the brook, and striving to mingle a more light- 
some cadence with its melancholy voice. But the little 
stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling its 
unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery 
that had happened—or making a prophetic lamentation 
about something that was yet to happen—within the 
verge of the dismal forest. So Pearl, who had enough 
of shadow in her own little life, chose to break off all 
acquaintance with this repining brook. She set herself, 
therefore, to gathering violets and wood-anemones, ang 


216 THT EP SCART Lowder: 2h rs 


some scarlet columbines that she found growing in the 
crevices of a high rock. 

When her elf-child had departed, Hester Prynne 
made a step or two towards the track that led through 
the forest, but still remained under the deep shadow of 
the trees. She beheld the minister advancing along 
the path, entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which 
he had cut by the wayside. He looked haggard ands 
feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, 
which had never so remarkably characterized him in 
his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situa- 
tion where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here 
it was woefully visible, in the intense seclusion of the 
forest, which, of itself, would have been a heavy trial 
to the spirits. There was a listlessness in his gait; as 
if he saw no reason for taking one step farther, nor 
felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, 
could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at 
the root of the nearest tree, and lie tere passive, for 
evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil 
gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over his 
frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. 
Death was too definite an object to be wished for or 
avoided. 

To Hester’s eye, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale ex- 
hibited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffer- 
ing, except that, as little Pearl had remarked, he kept 
his hand over his heart. 


XVII 
THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 


SLOWLY as the minister walked, he had almost gone 
by, before Hester Prynne could gather voice enough to 
attract his observation. At length, she succeeded. 

“Arthur Dimmesdale!’ she said, faintly at first; 
then louder, but hoarsely. ‘Arthur Dimmesdale!” 

“Who speaks?” answered the minister. | 

Gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, 
like a man taken by surprise in a mood to which he 
was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes 
anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly 
beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments so 
sombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight 
into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had 
darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it 
were a woman or a shadow. It may be, that his path- 
way through life was haunted thus, by a spectre that 
had stolen out from among his thoughts. 

He made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet 
letter. 

“Hester! Hester Prynne!” said he: “Is it thou? 
Art thou in life?” 

“Even so!’ she answered. “In such life as has been 
mine these seven vears past! And thou, Arthur Dim- 
mesdale, dost thou yet live?” 


It was no wonder that they thus questioned one an- 
217 


518 THE SCARLET LETTER 


other’s actual and bodily existence, and even doubted 
of their own. So strangely did they meet, in the dim 
wood, that it was like the first encounter, in the world 
beyond the grave, of two spirits who had been inti- 
mately connected in their former life, but now stood 
coldly shuddering, in mutual dread; as not yet familiar 
with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of 
disembodied beings. Each a ghost, and awe-stricken 
at the other ghost! They were awe-stricken likewise 
at themselves; because the crisis flung back to them 
their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its his- 
tory and experience, as life never does, except at such 
breathless epochs. The soul beheld its features in the 
mirror of the passing moment. It was with fear, and 
tremulously, and, as it were, by a slow, reluctant ne- 
cessity, that Arthur Dimmesdale put forth his hand, 
chill as death, and touched the chill hand of Hester 
Prynne. The grasp, cold as it was, took away what 
was dreariest in the interview. They now felt them- 
selves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere. 
Without a word more spoken,—neither he nor she 
assuming the guidance, but with an unexpressed con- 
sent,—they glided back into the shadow of the woods, 
whence Hester had emerged, and sat down on the heap 
of moss where she and Pearl had before been sitting. 
When they found voice to speak, it was, at first, only 
to utter remarks afid inquiries such as any two ac- 
Juaintances: might have made, about the gloomy sky, 
the threatening storm, and, next, the health of each. 
Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by step, 
into the themes that were brooding deepest in their 
hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances, 
they needed something slight and casual to run before, 


h 
i 
; 
; 
. 
4 
P 
f 








THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 219 


and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their 
real thoughts might be led across the threshold. 

After a while, the minister fixed his eyes on Hester 
Prynne’s. 

“Hester,” said he, “hast thou found peace?” 

She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom. 

“Hast thou?” she asked. 

“None !—nothing but despair!’ he answered. “What 
else could I look for, being what I am, and leading 
such a life as mine? Were I an atheist,—a man ce- 
void of conscience,—a wretch with coarse and brutal 
instincts,—I might have found peace, long ere now. 
Nay, I never should have lost it! But, as matters 
stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there 
originally was in me, all of God’s gifts that were the 
choicest have become the ministers of spiritual tor- 
ment. Hester, I am most miserable!” 

“The people reverence thee,’ said Hester. “And 
surely thou workest good among them! Doth this 
bring thee no comfort ?” 

“More misery, Hester!—only the more misery!” 
answered the clergyman, with a bitter smile. “As con- 
cerns the good which I may appear to do, I have no 
faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a 
ruined soul, like mine, effect towards the redemption 
of other souls ?’—or a polluted soul towards their puri- 
fication? And as for the people’s reverence, would 
that it were turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thou 
deem it, Hester, a consolation, that I must stand up in 
my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward to 
my face, as if the light of heaven were beaming from 
it!—must see my flock hungry for the truth, and lis- 
tening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were 


220 TEV Cae) hier 


speaking !—and then look inward, and discern the black 
reality of what they idolize? I have laughed, in bitter- 
ness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what 
I seem and what lam! And Satan laughs at it!” 

“You wrong yourself in this,’ said Hester, gently. 
“You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is 
left behind you, in the days long past. Your present 
life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in 
people’s eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus 
sealed and witnessed by good works? And wherefore 
should it not bring you peace?” 

“No, Hester, no!” replied the clergyman. “There is 
no substance in it! It is cold and dead, and can do 
nothing for me! Of penance, I have had enough! 
Of penitence, there has been none! Else, I should 
long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holi- 
ness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will 
see me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you, Hester, 
that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! 
Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a re- 
lief it is, after the torment of a seven years’ cheat, to 
look into an eye that recognizes me for what I am! 
Had I one friend—or were it my worst enemy !—to 
whom, when sickened with the praises of all other 
men, I could daily betake myself, and be known as 
the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep 
itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would 
save me! But, now, it is all falsehood !—all emptiness! 
—all death!” 

Hester Prynne looked into his face, but hesitated to 
speak. Yet, uttering his long-restrained emotions so 
vehemently as he did, his words here offered her the 
very point of circumstances in which to interpose what 





THE PASTOR/SAND HIS PARISHIONER | 225, 


she came to say. She conquered her fears, and spoke. 

“Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for,” 
said she, “with whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast 
in me, the partner of it!’—Again she hesitated, but 
brought out the words with an effort—‘‘Thou hast 
long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under 
the same roof!” 

The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, 
and clutching at his heart, as if he would have torn it 
out of his bosom. 

“Tat What ‘sayest thou!” cried he. .“An enemy! 
And under mine own roof! What mean you?” 

Hester Prynne was now fully sensible of the deep 
injury for which she was responsible to this unhappy 
man, in permitting him to lie for so many years, or, 
indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one whose 
purposes could not be other than malevolent. The very 
contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the 
latter might conceal himself, was enough to disturb 
the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as Arthur 
Dimmesdale. There had: been a period when Hester 
was less alive to this consideration; or, perhaps, in the 
misanthropy of her own trouble, she left the minister 
to bear what she might picture to herself as a more 
tolerable doom. But of late, since the night of his 
vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both 
softened and invigorated. She now read his heart 
more accurately. She doubted not, that the continual 
presence of Roger Chillingworth,—the secret poison 
of his malignity, infecting all the air about him,—and 
his authorized interference, as a physician, with the 
minister’s physical and spiritual infirmities,—that these 
bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. 


poi THESSCARLET BARE E 


By means of them, the sufferer’s conscience had been 
kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, 
not to cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and 
corrupt his spiritual being. Its result, on earth, could 
hardly fail to be insanity, and, hereafter, that eternal 
alienation from the Good and True, of which madness 
is perhaps the earthly type. 

Such was the ruin to which she had brought the 
man, once,—nay, why should we not speak of itr— 
still so passionately loved! Hester felt that the sacri- 
fice of the clergyman’s good name, and death itself, as 
she had already told Roger Chillingworth, would have 
been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she 
had taken upon herself to choose. And now, rather 
than have had this grievous wrong to confess, she 
would gladly have lain down on the forest-leaves, and 
died, there, at Arthur Dimmesdale’s feet. 

“O Arthur,” cried she, “forgive me! In all things 
else, I have striven to be true! Truth was the one 
virtue which I might have’held fast, and did hold fast, 
through all extremity; save when thy good,—thy life, 
—thy fame,—were put in question! Then I consented 
to a deception. But a lie is never good, even though 
death threaten on the other side! Dost thou not see 
what I would say? That old man!the physician !— 
he whom they call Roger Chillingworth !—he was my 
husband !” 

The minister looked at her for an instant, with all 
that violence of passion, which—intermixed, in more 
shapes than one, with his higher, purer, softer quali- 
ties—was, in fact, the portion of him which the Devil 
claimed, and through which he sought to win the rest. 
Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than 


TARSPASRORVAN Dini S4RARISTHLONE R223 


Hester now encountered. For the brief space that it 
lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. But his charac- 
ter had been so much enfeebled by suffering, that even 
its lower energies were incapable of more than a tem- 
porary struggle. He sank down on the ground, and 
buried his face in his hands. 

“T might have known it,” murmured he. “I did 
know it! Was not the secret told me, in the natural 
recoil of my heart, at the first sight of him, and as 
often as I have seen him? Why did I not understand? 
O Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the 
horror of this thing! And the shame !—the indelicacy ! 
—the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and 
guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! 
Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this! I 
cannot forgive thee!’ 

“Thou shalt forgive me!” cried Hester, flinging her- 
self on the fallen leaves beside him. “Let God punish! 
Thou shalt forgive!” 

With sudden and desperate tenderness, she threw 
her arms around him, and pressed his head against her 
bosom; little caring though his cheek rested on the 
scarlet letter. He would have released himself, but 
strove in vain to do so. Hester would not set him free, 
lest he should look her sternly in the face. All the 
world had frowned on her,—for seven long years had 
it frowned upon this lonely woman,—and still she bore 
it all, nor ever once turned away her firm, sad eyes. 
Heaven, likewise, had frowned upon her, and she had 
not died. But the frown of this pale, weak, sinful, and 
sorrow-stricken man was what Hester could not bear 
and live! 

“Wilt thou yet forgive me!” she repeated, over and 


224 THE SCARLET LETTER 


over again. “Wilt thou not frown? Wilt thou for- 
give?” , 

_ “T do forgive you, Hester,” replied the minister, at 
length, with a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sad- 
ness, but no anger. “I freely forgive you now. May 
God forgive us both! We are not, Hester, the worst 
sinners in the world. There is one worse than even 
the polluted priest! That old man’s revenge has been 
blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, 
the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, 
never did so!” 

“Never, never!’ whispered she. “What we did had 
a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so 
to each other! Hast thou forgotten it?” 

“Hush, Hester!’ said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising 
from the ground. “No; I have not forgotten!” 

They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped 
in hand, on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life 
had never brought them a gloomier hour; it was the 
point whither their pathway had so long been tending, 
and darkening ever, as it stole along; and yet it en- 
closed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim 
another, and another, and, after all, another moment. 
The forest was obscure around them, and creaked with 


a blast that was passing through it. The boughs were | 


tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn 
old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the 
sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained 
to forebode evil to come. 

And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the for- 
est-track that led backward to the settlement, where 
Hester Prynne must take up again the burden of. her 
ignominy, and the minister the hollow mockery of his 





LE PASTEORGAND- AHISVPARISHIONER | 22% 


good name! So they lingered an instant longer. No 
golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of 
this dark forest. Here, seen only by his eyes, the 
scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen 
woman! Here, seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmes- 
dale, false to God and man, might be, for one moment, 
true! 

He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to 
him. 

“Hester,” cried he, “here is a new horror! Roger 
Chillingworth knows your purpose to reveal his true 
character. Will he continue, then, to keep our secret? 
What will now be the course of his revenge?” 

“There is a strange secrecy in his nature,’ replied 
Hester, thoughtfully; “and it has grown upon him by 
the hidden practices of his revenge. I deem it not 
likely that he will betray the secret. He will doubtless 
seek other means of satiating his dark passion.” 

“And I!—how am I to live longer, breathing the 
same air with this deadly enemy?’ exclaimed Arthur 
Dimmesdale, shrinking within himself, and pressing 
his hand nervously against his heart,—a gesture that 
had grown involuntary with him. “Think for me, 
Hester! Thou art strong. Resolve for me!’ 

“Thou must dwell no longer with this man,’ said 
Hester, slowly and firmly ‘Thy heart must be ne 
longer under his evil eye!” 

“Tt were far worse than death!” replied the minister. 
“But how to avoid it? What choice remains to me? 
Shall I lie down again on these withered leaves, where 
I cast myself when thou didst tell me what he was? 
Must I sink down there, and die at once?” 

‘“‘Alas, what a ruin has befallen thee!’ said Hester, 


b) 


226 DHE SGARLET TBI ie 


with the tears gushing into her eyes. “Wilt thou die 
for very weakness? There is no other cause!” 

“The judgment of God is on me,” answered the con- 
acience-stricken priest. “It is too mighty for me to 
struggle with!” 

“Heaven would show mercy,’ rejoined Hester, 

“hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it.”’ 
' “Be thou strong for me!” answered he. ‘Advise 
me what to do.” 

“Ts the world, then, so narrow?” exclaimed Hester 
Prynne, fixing her deep eyes on the minister’s, and in- 
stinctively exercising a magnetic power over a Spirit so 
shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold itself 
erect. “Doth the universe lie within the compass of 
yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a 
leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? 
Whither leads yonder forest-track? Backward to the 
settlement, thou sayest! Yes; but onward, too. Deeper 
it goes, and deeper, into the wilderness, less plainly to 
be seen at every step, until, some few miles hence, the 
vellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man’s 
tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would 
coring thee from a world where thou hast been most 
wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy! Is 
there not shade enough in all this boundless forest to 
hide thy heart from the gaze of Roger Chillingworth?” 

“Yes, Hester; but only under the fallen leaves!” re- 
plied the minister, with a sad smile. 

“Then there is the broad pathway of the sea!” con- 
tinued Hester. “It brought thee hither. If thou so 
choose, it will bear thee back again. In our native land, 
whether in some remote rural village or in vast Lon- 
flon,—or, surely, in Germany, in France, in pleasant 





Witt Aol One Sct ARIS) ON Re 237 


Italy—thou wouldst be beyond his power and knowl. 
edge! And what hast thou to do with all these iron 
men, and their opinions? They have kept thy better 
part in bondage too long already!” 

“It cannot be!’ answered the minister, listening as 
if he were called upon to realize a dream. “I am 
powerless to go! Wretched and sinfui as I am, I have 
had no other thought than to drag on my earthly ex- 
istence in the sphere where Providence hath placed me. 
Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may 
for other human souls! I dare not quit my post, 
though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is 
death and dishonor, when his dreary watch shall come 
to an end!” 

“Thou art crushed under this seven years’ weight 
of misery,” replied Hester, fervently resolved to buoy 
him up with her own energy. “But thou shalt leave 
it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, ag 
thou treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt thou 
freight the ship with it, 1f thou prefer to cross the sea. 
Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. 
Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou 
exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? 
Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success. 
There is happiness to be enjoyed! There is good to be 
done! Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. 
Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the 
teacher and apostle of the red men. Or,—as is more 
thy nature,—be a scholar and a sage among the wisest 
and most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! 
Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! 
Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make 
thyself another, and a high one, such as thou cansé 


228 BOB SG ah Rds Pd rene 


wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry 
so much as one other day in the torments that have 
so gnawed into thy life!—that have made thee feeble 
to will and to do /—that will leave thee powerless even 
to repent! Up, and away!” 

“O Hester!’ cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose 
eyes a fitful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed 
up and died away, “‘thou tellest of running a race to a 
man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I must 
die here! There is not the strength or courage left me 
to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, 
alone!” 

Tt was the last expression of the despondency of a 
broken spirit. He lacked energy to grasp the better 
fortune that seemed within his reach. 

He repeated the word. 

“Alone, Hester!” 

“Thou shalt not go alone!’ answered she, in a deep 
whisper. 

Then, all was spoken! 


XVITI 
A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 


ARTHUR DIMMESDALE gazed into Hester’s face with 
a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but 
with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her 
boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at 
_ but dared not speak. 

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage 
and activity, and for so long a period not merely 
estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated 
herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether 
foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without 
rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as in- 
tricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the 
gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that 
was to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart had. 
their home, as it were, in desert places, where she 
roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. For 
years past she looked from this estranged point of view 
at human institutions, and whatever priests or legisla- 
tors have established; criticising all with hardly more 
reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical 
band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fire- - 
side, or the church. The tendency of her fate and for- 
tunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was 
her passport into regions where other women dared not 


tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her 
229 


230 THEXSCARLET LETTER 


teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made 
her strong, but taught her much amiss. 

The minister, on the other hand, had never gone 
through an experience calculated to lead him beyond 
the scope of generally received laws; although, in a 
single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one 
of the most sacred of them. But this had been a sin 
of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. Since 
that wretched epoch, he had watched, with morbid zeal 
and minuteness, not his acts,—for those it was easy to 
arrange,—but each breath of emotion, and his every 
thought. At the head of the social system, as the 
clergymen of that day stood, he was only the more 
trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and even 
its prejudices. Asa priest, the framework of his order 
inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once 
sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and pain- 
fully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound, 
he might have been supposed safer within the line of 
virtue than 1f he had never sinned at all. 

Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Hester 
Prynne, the whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy 
had been little other than a preparation for this very 
hour. But Arthur Dimmesdale! Were such a man 
once more to fall, what plea could be urged in extenu- 
ation of his crime? None; unless it avail him some- 
what, that he was broken down by long and exquisite 
suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by 
the very remorse which harrowed it; that between 
fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining as a hypo- 
crite, conscience might find it hard to strike the bal- 
ance; that it was human to avoid the peril of death and 
infamy, and the inscrutable machinations of an enemy; 


| 





A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 231 


that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his dreary and 
desert path, faint, sick, miserable, there appeared a 
glimpse of human affection and sympathy, a new life, 
and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doom which 
he was now expiating. And be the stern and sad truth 
spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into 
the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. 
It may be watched and guarded; so that the enemy 
shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might 
even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other ave- 
nue, in preference to that where he had formerly suc- 
ceeded. But there is still the ruined wall, and, near it, 
the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again 
his unforgotten triumph. 

The struggle, if it were one, need not be described. 
Let it suffice, that the clergyman resolved to flee, and 
not alone. 

Pi terin ail these past seven years, thought hewat 
could recall one instant of peace or hope, I would yet 
endure for the sake of that earnest of Heaven’s mercy. 
But now,—since I am irrevocably doomed,—where- 
fore should I not snatch the solace allowed to the con- 
demned culprit before his execution? Or, if this be 
the path to a better life, as Hester would persuade me, 
I surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it! 
Neither can I anv longer live without her companion-_ 
ship; so powerful is she to sustain,—so tender to 
soothe! O Thou to whom IJ dare not lift mire eyes, 
wilt Thou yet pardon me!” 

“Thou wilt go!’ said Hester, calmly, as he met her 
glance. 

The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoy- 
ment threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of 


232 FHIO SCARLET LELPER 


his breast. It was the exhilarating effect—upon a 
prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own 
heart—of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an 
unredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region. His spirit 
rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer 
prospect of the sky, than throughout all the misery 
which had kept him grovelling on the earth. Of a 
deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a 
tinge of the devotional in his mood. 

“Do I feel joy again?” cried he, wondering at him- 
self. “Methought the germ of it was dead in me! 
O Hester, thou art my better angel! I seem to have 
flung myself—sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened 
—down upon these forest-leaves, and to have risen up 
all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him 
that hath been merciful! This is already the better 
life! Why did we not find it sooner?” 

“Let us not look back,’ answered Hester Prynne. 
“The past is gone! Wherefore should we linger upon 
it now? See! With this symbol, I undo it all, and 
make’ it as it had never been!” 

So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the 
scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it 
to a distance among the withered leaves. The mystic 
token alighted on the hither verge of the stream. With 
a hand’s-breadth farther flight it would have fallen into 
the water, and have given the little brook another woe 
to carry onward, besides the unintelligible tale which it 
still kept murmuring about. But there lay the em- 
broidered letter, glittering like a lost jewel, which some 
ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be 
haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the 
heart, and unaccountable misfortune. 


‘A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 233 


The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, 
in which the burden of shame and anguish departed 
from her spirit. Oh, exquisite relief! She had not 
known the weight, until she felt the freedom! By an- 
other impulse, she took off the formal cap that con- 
fined her hair; and down it fell upon her shoulders, 
dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its 
abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her 
features. There played around her mouth, and beamed 
out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed 
gushing from the very heart of womanhood. A crim- 
son flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been long 
so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of 
her beauty, came back from what men call the ir- 
revocable past, and clustered themselves, with her 
maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within 
the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of 
the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these 
two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All 
at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst 
the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure 
forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the 
yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the 
gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had 
made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. 
The course of the little brook might be traced by its 
merry gleam afar into the wood’s heart of mystery, 
which had become a mystery of joy. 

Such was the sympathy of Nature—that wild, 
heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by hu- 
man law, nor illumined by higher truth—with the bliss 
of these two spirits! Love, whether newly born, or 
aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create 


234 DEES Cr Palys Heide 1 


a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it 
overflows upon the outward world. Had the forest 
still kept its gloom, it would have been bright in Hes- 
ter’s eyes, and bright in Arthur Dimmesdale’s! 

Hester looked at him with the thrill of another joy. 

“Thou must know Pearl!” said she. “Our little 
Pearl! Thou hast seen her,—yes, I know it!—but 
thou wilt see her now with other eyes. She is a strange 
child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou wilt love 
her dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal 
with her.” , 

“Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?” 
asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. “I have long 
shrunk from children, because they often show a dis- 
trust,—a backwardness to be familiar with me. I have 
even been afraid of little Pearl!” 

“Ah, that was sad!” answered the mother. “But 
she will love thee dearly, and thou her. She is not far 
ofa: ewallvcall “her ie Pearl Pearls 

“T see the child,” observed the minister. “Yonder 
she is, standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way 
off, on the other side of the brook. So thou thinkest 
the child will love me?” 

Hester smiled, and again called to Pearl, who was 
visible, at some distance, as the minister had described 
her, like a bright-apparelled vision, in a sunbeam, 
which fell down upon her through an arch of boughs. 
The ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or 
distinct,—now like a real child, now like a child’s spirit, 
-—as the splendor went and came again. She heard her 
mother’s voice, and approached slowly through the 
forest. 

Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, 


A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 235 


while her mother sat talking with the clergyman. The 
great black forest—stern as it showed itself to those 
who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into its 
bosom—became the playmate of the lonely infant, as 
well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the 
kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her 
the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding au- 
tumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red as 
drops of blood upon the withered leaves. These Pearl 
gathered, and was pleased with their wild flavor. The 
small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to 
move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a 
brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, 
but soon repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her 
young ones not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low 
branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, and uttered a 
sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel from 
the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in 
anger or merriment,—for a squirrel is such a choleric 
and humorous little personage, that it is hard to dis- 
tinguish between his moods,—so he chattered at the 
child, and flung down a nut upon her head. It was a 
last year’s nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. 
A fox, startled from his sleep by her light footstep on — 
the Jeaves, looked inquisitively at Pearl, as doubting 
whether it were better to steal off, or renew his nap on 
the same spot. A wolf, it is said—but here the tale 
has surely lapsed into the improbable——came up, and 
smelt of Pearl’s robe, and offered his savage head to be 
patted by her hand. The truth seems to be, however, 
that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it 
nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the 
human child. 


236 PAPE SOAR EASE she Ie 


And she was gentler here than in the grassy-mar- 
gined streets of the settlement, or in her mother’s cot- 
tage. The flowers appeared to know it; and one and 
another whispered as she passed, “Adorn thyself with 
me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!’— 
and, to please them, Pearl gathered the violets, and 
anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the 
freshest green, which the old trees held down before 
her eyes. With these she decorated her hair, and her 
young waist, and became a nymph-child, or an infant 
dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with 
the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adorned 
herself, when she heard her mother’s voice, and came 
slowly back. 

Slowly; for she saw the clergyman. 


XIX 
THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 


“THou wilt love her dearly,’ repeated Hester 
Prynne, as she and the minister sat watching little 
Pearl. “Dost thou not think her beautiful? And see 
with what natural skill she has made those simple flow- 
ers adorn her! Had she gathered pearls, and dia- 
monds, and rubies, in the wood, they could not have 
become her better. She is a splendid-child! But I 
know whose brow she has!’ 

“Dost thou know, Hester,” said Arthur Dimmes- 
dale, with an unquiet smile, ‘“‘that this dear child, trip- 
ping about always at thy side, hath caused me many 
an alarm? Methought—O Hester, what a thought is 
that, and how terrible to dread it!—that my own fea- 
tures were partly repeated in her face, and so strikingly 
that the world might see them! But she is mostly 
thine!” 

“No, no! Not mostly!’ answered the mother, with 
a tender smile. “A little longer, and thou needest not 
to be afraid to trace whose child she is. But how 
strangely beautiful she looks, with those wild-flowers 
in her hair! It is.as if one of the fairies, whom we left 
in our dear old England, had decked her out to meet 
11S 4 


1? 


It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever 
before experienced that they sat and watched Pearl’s 
237 


238 THE SCARLET LETTER 


slow advance. In her was visible the tie that united 
them. She had been offered to the world, these seven 
years past, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was re- 
vealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide,—all 
written in this symbol,—all plainly manifest,—had 
there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the 
character of flame! And Pearl was the oneness of their 
being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how could 
they doubt that their earthly lives and future destinies 
were conjoined, when they beheld at once the material 
_ union, and the spiritual idea, in whom they met, and 
were to dwell immortally together? Thoughts like 
these—and perhaps other thoughts, which they did not 
acknowledge or define—threw an awe about the child 
as she came onward. 

“Let her see nothing strange—no passion nor eager- 
ness—in thy way of accosting her,’ whispered Hester. 
“Our Pearl is a fitful and fantastic little elf, some- 
times. Especially she is seldom tolerant of emotion, 
when she does not fully comprehend the why and 
wherefore. But the child hath strong affections! She 
loves me, and will love thee!” 

“Thou canst not think,” said the minister, glancing 
aside at Hester Prynne, “how my heart dreads this 
interview, and yearns for it! But, in truth, as I already 
told thee, children are not readily won to be familiar 
with me. They will not climb my knee, nor prattle in 
my ear, nor answer to my smile; but stand apart, and 
eye me strangely. Even little babes, when I take them 
in my arms, weep bitterly. Yet Pearl, twice in her little 
lifetime, hath been kind to me! The first time,—thou 
knowest it well! The last was when thou ledst her 
with thee to the house of yonder stern old Governor.” 


THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 239 


“And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and 
mine!’ answered the mother. “I remember it; and so 
shall little Pearl. Fear nothing! She may be strange 
and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee!” 

By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the 
brook, and stood on the farther side, gazing silently at 
Hester and the clergyman, who still sat together on the 
mossy tree-trunk, waiting to receive her. Just where 
she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool, so 
smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of 
her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness 
of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed 
foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than the 
reality. This image, so nearly identical with the living 
Pearl, seemed to communicate somewhat of its own 
shadowy and intangible quality to the child herself. 
It was strange, the way in which Pearl stood, looking 
so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the 
forest-gloom; herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a 
ray of sunshine that was attracted thitherward as by a 
certain sympathy. In the brook beneath stood an- 
other child,—another and the same,—with likewise its 
ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, in some indis- 
tinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl; 
as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, 
had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her 
mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to 
return to it. | 

There was both truth and error in the impression; 
the child and mother were estranged, but through 
Hester’s fault, not Pearl’s. Since the latter rambled 
from her side, another inmate had been admitted within 
the circle of the mother’s feelings, and so modified the 


240 DEAE ARLE RIDE ITER 


aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning wanderer, 
could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew where 
she was. 

“T have a strange fancy,” observed the sensitive min- 
ister, “that this brook is the boundary between two 
worlds, and that thou canst never meet thy Pearl again. 
Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of our 
childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running 
stream? Pray hasten her; for this delay has already 
imparted a tremor to my nerves.” 

“Come, dearest child!’ said Hester, encouragingly, 
and stretching out both her arms. ‘How slow thou 
art! When hast thou been so sluggish before now? 
Here is a friend of mine, who must be thy friend also. 
Thou wilt have twice as much love, henceforward, as 
thy mother alone could give thee! Leap across the 
brook, and come to us. Thou canst leap like a young 
deer!” 

Pearl, without responding in any manner to these 
honey-sweet expressions, remained on the other side of 
the brook. Now she fixed her bright, wild eyes on her 
mother, now on the minister, and now included them 
Loth in the same glance; as if to detect and explain 
to herself the relation which they bore to one another. 
For some unaccountable reason, as Arthur Dimmes- 
dale felt the child’s eyes upon himself, his hand—with 
that gesture so habitual as to have become involuntary 
—stole over his heart. At length, assuming a singular 
air of authority, Pearl stretched out her hand, with the 
small forefinger extended, and pointing evidently to- 
wards her mother’s breast. And beneath, in the mirror 
of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny 
{mage of little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger too. 


THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 241 


“Thou strange child, why dost thou not come to 
me?f’’ exclaimed Hester. 

Pearl still pointed with her forefinger; and a frown 
gathered on her brow; the more impressive from the 
childish, the almost baby-like aspect of the features 
that conveyed it. As her mother still kept beckoning 
to her, and arraying her face in a holiday suit of unac- 
customed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a yet 
more imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, 
was the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected 
frown, its pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giv- 
ing emphasis to the aspect of little Pearl. 

“Fasten, Pearl; or I shall be angry with thee!’’ cried 
Hester Prynne, who, however inured to such behavior 
on the elf-child’s part at other seasons, was naturally 
anxious for a more seemly deportment now. “Leap 
across the brook, naughty child, and run hither! Else 
I must come to thee!’ 

But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother’s threats 
any more than mollified by her entreaties, now sud- 
denly burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently 
and throwing her small figure into the most extrava- 
gant contortions. She accompanied this wild outbreak 
with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated 
on all sides; so that, alone as she was in her childish 
and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden multi- 
tudeywere lending her their sympathy and encourage- 
ment. Seen in the brook, once more, was the shadowy — 
wrath of Pearl’s image, crowned and girdled with flow- 
ers, but stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and, in 
the midst of all, still pointing its small forefinger at 
Hester's bosom! 

“T see what ails the child,’ whispered Hester to the 


242 DHE SCARTE Were k 


clergyman, and turning pale in spite of a strong effort 
to conceal her trouble and annoyance. “Children will 
not abide any, the slightest, change in the accustomed 
aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Pearl 
irlisses something which she has always seen me wear!” 

“TI pray you,” answered the minister, “if thou hast 
any means of pacifying the child, do it forthwith! 
Save it were the cankered wrath of an old witch, like 
Mistress Hibbins,” added he, attempting to smile, “T 
know nothing that I would not sooner encounter than 
this passion in a child. In Pearl’s young beauty, as in 
the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify 
her, if thou lovest me!’’ 

Hester turned again towards Pearl, with a crimson 
blush upon her cheek, a conscious glance aside at the 
clergymari, and then a heavy sigh; while, even before 
she had time to speak, the blush yielded to a deadly 
pallor. 

“Pearl,” said she, sadly, “look down at thy feet! 
There!—before thee!—on the hither side of the 
brook!” 

The child turned her eyes to the point indicated; 
and there lay the scarlet letter, so close upon the margin 
of the stream, that the gold embroidery was reflected 
in it. 

“Bring it hither!” said Hester. 

“Come thou and take it up!” answered Pearl. 

“Was ever such a child!’ observed Hester, aside to 
the minister. ‘Oh, I have much to tell thee about her! 
But, in very truth, she is right as regards this hateful 
token. J must bear its torture yet a little longer,—only 
a few days longer,—until we shall have left this region 
and look back hither as to a land which we have 





DHE DATE BROOK-SIDE” 243 


dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it! The mid- 
ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up 
forever !”’ 

With these words, she advanced to the margin of 
the brook, took up the scarlet letter, and fastened it 
again into her bosom. Hopefully, but a moment ago, 
as Hester had spoken of drowning it in the deep sea, 
there was a sense of inevitable doom upon her, as she 
thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand 
of fate. She had flung it into infinite space!—she had 
drawn an hour’s free breath !—and here again was the 
scarlet misery, glittering on the old spot! So it ever 
is, whether thus typified or no, that an evil deed invests 
itself with the character of doom. Hester next gath- 
ered up the heavy tresses of her hair, and confined 
them beneath her cap. As if there were a withering 
spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and rich- 
ness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sun- 
shine; and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her. 

When the dreary change was wrought, she extended 
her hand to Pearl. 

“Dost thou know thy mother now, child!’ asked she, 
-reproachfully, but with a subdued tone. “Wilt thou 
come across the brook, and own thy mother, now that 
_ she has her shame upon her,—now that she is sad?” 
“Ves; ttow I will!” answered the child, bounding 
across the brook, and clasping Hester in her arms. 
_ “Now thou art my mother indeed! And I am thy little 
Pearl!’ : 
In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with 
her, she drew down her mother’s head, and kissed her 
brow and both her cheeks. But then—by a kind of 
necessity that always impelled this child to alloy what- 


244 Te SC Ak BT ECan 


ever comfort she might chance to give with a throb of 
anguish—~Pearl put up her mouth, and kissed the scar- 
let letter too! 

“That was not kind!” said Hester. “When thou 
hast shown me a little love, thou mockest me!” 

“Why doth the minister sit yonder?” asked Pearl. 

“He waits to welcome thee,’ replied her mother. 
“Come thou, and entreat his blessing! He loves thee, 
my little Pearl, and loves thy mother too. Wilt thou 
not love him? Come! he longs to greet thee!” - 

“Doth he love us?” said Pearl, looking up, with 
acute intelligence, into her mother’s face. ‘Will he 
go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into 
the town?” 

“Not now, my dear child,” answered Hester. “But 
in days to come, he will walk hand in hand with us. We 
will have a home and fireside of our own; and thou 
shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach thee many 
things, and love thee dearly. Thou wilt love him; wilt 
thou not?” 

“And will he always keep his hand over his heart?” 
inquired Pearl. 

“Foolish child, what a question is that!’ exclaimed 
her mother. “Come and ask his blessing!” 

But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems 
instinctive with every petted child towards a dangerous 
tival, or from whatever caprice of her freakish nature, 
Pearl would show no favor to the clergyman. It was 
only by an exertion of force that her mother brought 
her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her re- 
luctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her 
habyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and 
could transform her mobile physiognomy into a series 





TOP Cote D ARI HE BROOK-SIDE: 245 


of different aspects, with a new mischief in them, each 
and all. The minister—painfully embarrassed, but 
hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman to admit him 
into the child’s kindlier regards—bent forward, and 
impressed one on her brow. MHereupon, Pearl broke 
away from her mother, and, running to the brook, 
stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the un- 
welcome kiss was quite washed off, and diffused 
through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then 
remained apart, silently watching Hester and the clergy~ 
man; while they talked together, and made such ar- 
rangements as were suggested by their new position, 
and the purposes soon to be fulfilled. 

And now this fateful interview had come to a close. 
The dell was to be left a solitude among its dark, old 
trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would 
whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal 
be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add 
this other tale to the mvstery with which its little heart 
was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up 
a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerful- 
ness of tone than for ages heretofore, 


XX 
THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 


As the minister departed, in advance of Hester 
Prynne and little Pearl, he threw a backward glance, 
half expecting that he should discover only some 
faintly traced features or outline of the mother and 
the child slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. 
So great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be 
received as real. But there was Hester, clad in her gray 
robe, still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some 
blast had overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which 
time had ever since been covering with moss, so that 
these two fated ones, with earth’s heaviest burden on 
them, might there sit down together, and find a single 
hour’s rest and solace. And there was Pearl. too, 
lightly dancing from the margin of the brook,—now 
that the intrusive third person was gone,—and taking 
her old place by her mother’s side. So the minister had 
not fallen asleep and dreamed! 

In order to free his mind from this indistinctness 
and duplicity o1 impression, which vexed it with a 
strange disquietude, he recalled and more thoroughly 
defined the plans which Hester and himself had 
sketched for their departure. It had been deter- 
mined between them that the Old World, with its 
crowds and cities, offered them a more eligible shelter 


and concealment than the wilds of New England, or all 
246 


, 


THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 247 


America, with its alternatives of an Indian wigwam, 
or the few settlements of Europeans, scattered thinly 
along the seaboard. Not to speak of the clergyman’s 
health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a 
forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his entire 
development would secure him a home only in the 
midst of civilization and refinement; the higher the 
state, the more delicately adapted to it the man. In 
furtherance of this choice, it so happened that a ship 
lay in the harbor; one of those questionable cruisers, 
frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely 
outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with 
a remarkable irresponsibility of character. This vessel 
had recently arrived from the Spanish Main, and, 
within three days’ time, would sail for Bristol. Hester 
Prynne—whose vocation, as a self-enlisted Sister of 
Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain 
and crew—could take upon herself to secure the pas- 
sage of two individuals and a child, with all the secrecy 
which circumstances rendered more than desirable. 
The minister had inquired of Hester, with no little 
interest, the precise time at which the vessel might be 
expected to depart. It would probably be on the fourth 
day from the present. “That is most fortunate!” he 
had then said to himself. Now, why the Reverend Mr. 
Dimmesdale considered it so very fortunate, we hesi- 
tate to reveal. Nevertheless,—to hold nothing back 
from the reader,—it was because, on the third day 
from the present, he was to preach the Election Ser- 
mon; and as such an occasion formed an honorable 
epoch in the life of a New England clergyman, he 
could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and 
time of terminating his professional career. “At least, 


248 THE SCARLET LETTER 


a 


they shall say of me,” thought this exemplary man, 
“that I leave no public duty unperformed, nor ill per- 
formed!’ Sad, indeed, that an introspection so pro- 
found and acute as this poor minister’s should be so 
miserably deceived! We had had, and may still have, 
worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, 
so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and 
irrefragable, of a subtle disease, that had long since 
begun to eat into the real substance of his character. 
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one 
face to himself, and another to the multitude, without 
finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. 

The excitement of Mr. Dimmesdale’s feelings, as he 
returned from his interview with Hester, lent him un- 
accustomed physical energy, and hurried him town- 
ward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woods 
seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural ob- 
stacles, and less trodden by the foot of man, than he 
remembered it on his outward journey. But he leaped 
across the plashy places, thrust himself through the 
clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, plunged into 
the hollow, and overcame, in short, cll the difficulties 
of the track, with an unwearitable activity that aston- 
ished him. He could not but recall how feebly, and 
with what frequent pauses for breath, he had toiled 
over the same ground, only two days before. As he 
drew near the town, he took an impression of change 
from the series of familiar objects that presented them- 
selves. It seemed not yesterday, not one, nor two, but 
many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted 
them. There, indeed, was each former trace of the 
street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of 
the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and 


THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 249 


a weathercock at every point where his memory sug. 
gested one. Not the less, however, came this importu- 
nately obtrusive sense of change. The same was true 
as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and alf 
the well-known shapes of human life, about the little 
town. They looked neither older nor younger now; 
the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the 
creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day; it 
was impossible to describe in what respect they differed 
from the individuals on whom he had so recently be- 
stowed a parting glance; and yet the minister’s deepest 
sense seemed to inform him of. their mutability. A 
similar impression struck him most remarkably, as he 
passed under the walls of his own church. The edifice 
had so very strange, and yet so familiar, an aspect, that 
Mr. Dimmesdale’s mind vibrated between two ideas; 
either that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or 
that he was merely dreaming about it now. 

This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it 
assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden 
and important a change in the spectator of the familiar 
scene, that the intervening space of a single day had 
operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years. 
The minister’s own will, and Hester’s will, and the fate 
that grew between them, had wrought this transforma- 
tion. It was the same town as heretofore; but the same 
minister returned not from the forest. He might have 
said to the friends who greeted him,—‘I am not the 
man for whom you take me! I left him yonder in the 
forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree- 
trunk, and near a melancholy brook! Go seek your 
minister, and see if his emaciated figure, his thin cheek, 
his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung 


250 TE VSOARDER LETIER 


down there, like a cast-off garment!’ His friends, no 
doubt, would still have insisted with him,—‘‘Thou art 
thyself the man!”—but the error would have been their 
own, not his. 

Before Mr. Dimmesdale reached home, his inner 
man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the 
sphere of thought and feeling. In truth, nothing short 
of a total change of dynasty and moral code, in that 
interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the im- 
pulses now communicated to the unfortunate and star- 
tled minister. At every step he was incited to do some 
strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that 
it would be at once involuntary and intentional; in 
spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self 
than that which opposed the impulse. For instance, 
he met one of his own deacons. The good old man 
addressed him with the paternal affection and patriar- 
chal privilege, which his venerable age, his upright and 
holy character, and his station in the Church, entitled 
him to use; and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost 
worshipping respect, which the minister’s professional 
and private claims alike demanded. Never was there 
a more beautiful example of how the majesty of age 
and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and re- 
spect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank, 
and inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. 
Now, during a conversation of some two or three mo- 
ments between the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale and this 
excellent and hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by the 
most careful self-control that the former could refrain 
from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that 
rose into his mind, respecting the communion supper. 
He absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest 


DHE MINISTER IN A MAZE 251 


his tongue should wag itself, in utterance of these hor- 
rible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, 
without his having fairly given it. And, even with this 
terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to 
imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon would 
have been petrified by his minister’s impiety! 

Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurry« 
ing along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale 
encountered the eldest female member of his church; 
a most pious and exemplary old dame; poor, widowed, 
lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about 
her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of 
long ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied grave- 
stones. Yet all this, which would else have been such 
heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her de- 
vout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths 
of Scripture, wherewith she had fed herself continu- 
ally for more than thirty years. And, since Mr. Dim- 
mesdale had taken her in charge, the good grandam’s 
chief earthly comfort—which, unless it had been like- 
wise a heavenly comfort, could have been none at all— 
was to meet her pastor, whether casually, or of set pur- 
pose, and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant, 
heaven-breathing Gospel truth, from his beloved lips, 
into her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. But, 
on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips 
to the old woman’s ear, Mr. Dimmesdale, as the great 
enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of 
Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as 
it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against 
the immortality of the human soul. The instilment 
thereof into her mind would probably have caused this 
aged sister to drop down dead at once, as by the effect 


252 DLE BS CALI Ty Tein Bare 


of an intensely poisonous infusion. What he really 
did whisper, the minister could never afterwards recol- 
lect. There was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in his 
utterance, which failed to impart any distinct idea to 
the good widow’s comprehension, or which Providence 
interpreted after a method of its own. Assuredly, as 
the minister looked back, he beheld an expression of 
divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine 
of the celestial city on her face, so wrinkled and ashy 
pale. 

Again a third instance. After parting from the old 
church-member, he met the youngest sister of them all. 
It was a maiden newly won—and won by the Reverend 
Mr. Dimmesdale’s own sermon, on the Sabbath after 
his vigil—to barter the transitory pleasures of the 
world for the heavenly hope, that was to assume 
brighter substance as life grew dark around her, and 
which would gild the utter gloom with final glory. 
She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in 
Paradise. The minister knew well that he was himself 
enshrined within the stainless sanctity of her heart, 
which hung its snowy curtains about his image, impart- 
ing to religion the warmth of love, and to love a re- 
ligious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led 
the poor young girl away from her mother’s side, and 
thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, or 
—shall we not rather say?-—this lost and desperate 
man. As she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered him 
to condense into small compass and drop into her ten- 
der bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blos- 
som darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. Such 
was his sense of power over this virgin soul, trusting 
‘im as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight 


THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 253 


all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, 
and develop all its opposite with but a word. So— 
with a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained— 
he held his Geneva cloak before his face, and hurried 
onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving 
the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. 
She ransacked her conscience,—which was full of 
harmless little matters, like her pocket or her work- 
bag,—and took herself to task, poor thing! for a thou- 
sand imaginary faults; and went about her household 
duties with swollen eyelids the next morning. 

Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory 
over this last temptation, he was conscious of another 
impulse, more. ludicrous, and almost as horrible. It 
was,—we blush to tell it,—it was to stop short in the 
road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of 
little Puritan children who were playing there, and 
had but just begun to talk. Denying himself this 
freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken sea- 
man, one of the ship’s crew from the Spanish Main. 
And, here, since he had so valiantly forborne all other 
wickedness, poor Mr. Dimmesdale longed, at least, to 
shake hands with the tarry blackguard, and recreate 
himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute 
sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round, 
solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths! It was 
not so much a better principle as partly his natural 
good taste, and still more his buckramed habit of cler- 
ical decorum, that carried him safely through the latter 
crisis. 

‘What is it that haunts and tempts me thus?” cried 
the minister to himself, at length, pausing in the street, 
and striking his hand against his forehead. “Am [ 


254 THE SOARL EW EE Big 


mad? or am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I 
make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with 
my blood? And does he now summon me to its fulfil- 
ment, by suggesting the performance of every wicked- 
ness which his most foul imagination can conceive?” 

At the moment when the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale 
thus communed with himself, and struck his forehead 
with his hand, old Mistress Hibbins, the reputed witch- 
lady, is said to have been passing by. She made a very 
grand appearance; having on a high head-dress, a rich 
gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous 
yellow starch, of which Ann Turner, her especial 
friend, had taught her the secret, before this last good 
lady had been hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury’s 
murder. Whether the witch had read the minister’s 
thoughts or no, she came to a full stop, looked shrewdly 
into his face, smiled craftily, and—though little given 
to converse with clergymen—began a conversation. 

“So, Reverend Sir, you have made a visit into the 
forest,’ observed the witch-lady, nodding her high 
head-dress at him. “The next time, I pray you to al- 
low me only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to 
bear you company. Without taking overmuch upon 
myself, my good word will go far towards gaining any 
strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder poten- 
tate you wot of!” 

“T profess, madam,” answered the clergyman, with 
a grave obeisance, such as the lady’s rank demanded, 
and his own good-breeding made imperative,—“‘I pro- 
fess, on my conscience and character, that I am utterly 
bewildered as touching the purport of your words! I 
went not into the forest to seek a potentate; neither do 
T, at any future time, design a visit thither, with a view 


’ 


THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 255 


to gaining the favor of such a personage. My one 
sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of mine, 
the Apostle Eliot, and rejoice with him over the many 
precious souls he hath won from heathendom!” 

“Ha, ha, ha!’ cackled the old witch-lady, still nod- 
ding her high head-dress at the minister. “Well, well, 
we must needs talk thus in the daytime! You carry i 
off like an old hand! But at midnight, and in the for- 
est, we shall have other talk together !’’ 

She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often 
turning back her head and smiling at him, like one 
willing to recognize a secret intimacy of connection. 

“Have I then sold myself,” thought the minister, 
“to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow- 
starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince 
and master!” 

The wretched minister! He had made a bargain 
very like it! Tempted by a dream of happiness, he 
had yielded himself, with deliberate choice, as he had 
never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. 
And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus 
rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had 
stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid 
life the whole brotherhood of bad cones. Scorn, bitter- 
-ness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, 
ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke, to 
tempt, even while they frightened him. And his en- ' 
counter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real 
incident, did but show his sympathy and fellowship 
with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits. 

He had, by this time, reached his dwelling, on the 
edge of the burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, 
took refuge in his study. The minister was glad to 


256 THE SCARLET LETTER 


have reached this shelter, without first betraying him- 
self to the world by any of those strange and wicked 
eccentricities to which he had been continually im- 
pelled while passing through the streets. He entered 
the accustomed room, and looked around him on its 
books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried 
‘comfort of the walls, with the same perception of 
strangeness that had haunted him throughout his walk 
from the forest-del! into the town, and thitherward. 
Here he had studied and written; here, gone through 
fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here, striven 
to pray; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! 
There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with 
Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and God’s 
voice through all! There, on the table, with the inky 
pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sen- 
tence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had 
ceased to gush out upon the page, two days before. 
He knew that it was himself, the thin and white- 
cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these 
things, and written thus far into the Election Sermon! 
But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self 
with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. 
That self was gone. Another man had returned out 
of the forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden’ 
mysteries which the simplicity of the former never 
could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that! 

While occupied with these reflections, a knock came 
at the door of the study, and the minister said, “Come 
in!’—not wholly devoid of an idea that he might be- 
hold an evil spirit. And so he did! It was old Roger 
Chillingworth that entered. The minister stood, white 





THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 259 


and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures, and the other spread upon his breast. 

“Welcome home, reverend Sir,” said the physician, 
“And how found you that godly man, the Apostle 
Eliot? But methinks, dear Sir, you look pale; as if the 
travel through the wilderness had been too sore for 
you. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in heart 
and strength to preach your Election Sermon?” 
| “Nay, I think not so,” rejoined the Reverend Mr. 
- Dimmesdale. “My journey, and the sight of the holy 
- Apostle yonder, and the free air which I have breathed, 
_ have done me good, after so long confinement in my 
study. I think to need no more of your drugs, my kind 
_ physician, good though they be, and administered by 
|a friendly hand.” 

All this time, Roger Chillingworth was looking at 
the minister with the grave and intent regard of a 
physician towards his patient. But, in spite of this out- 
ward show, the latter was almost convinced of the old 
man’s knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, 
with respect to his own interview with Hester Prynne. 
The physician knew then, that, in the minister’s regard, 
he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest en- 
emy. So much being known, it would appear natural 
that a part of it should be expressed. It is singular, 
however, how long a time often passes before words 
embody things; and with what security two persons, 
who choose to avoid a certain subject, may approach its 
very verge, and retire without disturbing it. Thus, 
the minister felt no apprehension that Roger Chilling- 
worth would touch, in express words, upon the real 
position which they sustained towards one another. 


258 THE SCARLET LETTER 


Yet did the physician, in his dark way, creep fright- 
fully near the secret. 

“Were it not better,” said he, “that you use my poor 
skill to-night? Verily, dear sir, we must take pains to 
make you strong and vigorous for this occasion of the 
Election discourse. The people look for great things 
from you; apprehending that ang year may come 
about, and find their pastor gone.” 

“Yea, to anoth.r world,” replied the minister, uh 
pious resignation. “Heaven grant it be a better one; 
for, in good sooth, I hardly think to tarry with my 
flock through the flitting seasons of another year! 
But, touching your medicine, kind Sir, in my present 
frame of body, I need it not.” 

“T joy to hear it,’’ answered the physician. “It may 
be that my remedies, so long administered in vain, 
begin now to take due effect. Happy man were I, and 
well deserving of New England’s gratitude, could I 
achieve this cure!” 

“T thank you from my heart, most watchful friend,” 
said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, with a solemn 
smile. “I thank you, and can but requite your good 
deeds with my prayers.” 

“A good man’s prayers are golden recompense!’ 
rejoined old Roger Chillingworth, as he took his leave. 
“Yea, they are the current gold coin of the New Jeru- 
salem, with the King’s own mint-mark on them!” 

Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the 
house, and requested food, which, being set before 
him, he ate with ravenous appetite. Then, flinging 
the already written pages of the Election Sermon into 
the fire, he forthwith began another, which he wrote 
with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, 


THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 


259 
that he fancied himself inspired; and only wondered 
that Heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and 
solemn music of its oracles through so foul an organ- 
pipe as he. However, leaving that mystery to solve 
itself, or go unsolved forever, he drove his task on- 
_ward, with earnest haste and ecstasy. Thus the night 
_ fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and he careering 
on it; morning came, and peeped, blushing, through the 
curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into 
the study and laid it right across the minister’s be- 
_ dazzled eyes. There he was, with the pen still between 
his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of writter 
_ space behind him! 


Ee 








XXI 
THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 


BreTimeEs in the morning of the day on which the 
new Governor was to receive his office at the hands of 


the people, Hester Prynne and little Pearl came into — 


the market-place. It was already thronged with the 
craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the town, 


in considerable numbers; among whom, likewise, were © 


many rough figures, whose attire of deer-skins marked 

them as belonging to some of the forest settlements, 

which surrounded the little metropolis of the colony. 
On this public holiday, as on all other occasions, for 


seven years past, Hester was clad in a garment of © 


coarse gray cloth. Not more by its hue than by some 
indescribable peculiarity in its fashion, it had the effect 
of making her fade personally out of sight and outline ; 
while, again, the scarlet letter brought her back from 
this twilight indistinctness, and revealed her under the 
moral aspect of its own illumination. Her face, so 
long familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble 
quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. 
It was like a mask; or, rather, like the frozen calmness 





ij 


; 


of a dead woman’s features; owing this dreary resem-/ 


blance to the fact that Hester was actually dead, in. re- 
spect to any claim of sympathy, and had departed out 
of the world, with which she still seemed to mingle. 


It might be, on this one day, that there was an- 
260 





THE NEW ENGLAND :;HOLIDAY.  26r 


expression unseen before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to 
be detected, now; unless some preternaturally gifted 
observer should have first read the heart, and have 
afterwards sought a corresponding development in the 
countenance and mien. Such a spiritual seer might 
_ have conceived, that, after sustaining the gaze of the 
_ multitude through seven miserable years as a neccs- 
| sity, a penance, and something which it was a stern 
religion to endure, she now, for one last time more, 
encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to con- 
vert what had so long been agony into a kind of tri- 
-umph. “Look your last on the scarlet letter and its 
_wearer!”—the people’s victim and life-long bond- 
slave, as they fancied her, might say to them. “Yet 
a little while, and she will be beyond your reach! A 
- few hours longer, and the deep mysterious ocean will 
quench and hide forever the symbol which ye have 
caused to burn upon her bosom!” Nor were it an in- 
consistency too improbable to be assigned to human 
nature, should we suppose a feeling of regret in Hes- 
_ter’s mind, at the moment when she was about to win 
her freedom from the pain which had been thus deeply 
incorporated with her being. Might there not be an 
irresistible desire to quaff a last, long, breathless 
- draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with which 
nearly all her years of womanhood had been perpetually 
flavored? The wine of life, henceforth to be presented 
to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and exhila- 
rating, in its chased and golden beaker; or else leave 
an inevitable and weary languor, after the lees of bit- 
terness wherewith she had been drugged, as with a cor- 
dial of intensest potency. 

Pearl was decked out with airy gayety. It would 


262 THE SCARLE Tu PARE 


have been impossible to guess that this bright and 
sunny apparition owed its existence to the shape of 
gloomy gray; or that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and 
so delicate as must have been requisite to contrive 
the child’s apparel, was the same that had achieved a 
task perhaps more difficult, in imparting so distinct 
a peculiarity to Hester’s simple robe. The dress, so 
proper was it to little Pearl, seemed an effluence, or 
inevitable development and outward manifestation of 
her character, no more to be separated from her than 
the many-hued brilliancy from a butterfly’s wing, or 
the painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower. 
As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of 
one idea with her nature. On this eventful day, more- 
over, there was a certain singular inquietude and ex- 
citement in her mood, resembling nothing so much as 
the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes 
with the varied throbbings of the breast on which it 
is displayed. Children have always a sympathy in the 
agitations of those connected with them; always, es- 
pecially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolu- 
tion, of whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and 
therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her mother’s 
unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her 
spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the 
marble passiveness of Hester’s brow. 

This effervescence made her flit with a bird-like 
movement, rather than walk by her mother’s side. She 
broke continually into shouts of a wild, inarticulate, 
and sometimes piercing music. When they reached 
the market-place, she became still more restless, on 
perceiving the stir and bustle that enlivened the spot; 


Po eee ee 


for it was usually more like the broad and lonesome — 





THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 263 


_ green before a village meeting-house, than the centre 
of a town’s business. 

_ “Why, what is this, mother?” cried she. ‘‘Where- 
fore have all the people left their work to-day? Is it 
a play-day for the whole world? See, there is the 
blacksmith! He has washed his sooty face, and put 
on his Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would 
gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach 
him how! And there is Master Brackett, the old 
jailer, nodding and smiling at me. Why does he do 
| so, mother ?” 

“He remembers thee a little babe, my child,” an- 
_swered Hester. 

“He should not nod and smile at me, for all that, 
_—the black, grim, ugly-eyed old man!’ said Pearl. 
| “He may nod at thee, if he will; for thou art clad 
_in gray, and wearest the scarlet letter. But see, mother, 
_how many faces of strange people, and Indians among 
| them, and sailors! What have they all come to do, 
_ here in the market-place?” 

“They wait to see the procession pass,’ said Hes- 
ter. “For the Governor and the magistrates are to 
_ go by, and the ministers, and all the great people and 
_ good people, with the music and the soldiers marching 
_ before them.” 

“And will the minister be there?” asked Pearl. “And 
will he hold out both his hands to me, as when thou 
ledst me to him from the brook-side?” 

“He will be there, child,’ answered her mother. 
“But he will not greet thee to-day; nor must thou 
| greet him.” 

_ “What a strange, sad man is he!” said the child, 
as if speaking partly to herself. “In the dark night- 


264 THE SCARLET LETTER 


time he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, 
as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder. 
And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can 
hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, 
sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my fore- | 
head, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash 
it off! But here, in the sunny day, and among all 
the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! 
A strange, sad man-is he, with his hand always over 
his heart!” 

“Be quiet, Pearl! Thou understandest not these 
things,” said her mother. “Think not now of the 
minister, but look about thee, and see how cheery is 
everybody’s face to-day. The children have come from | 
their schools, and the grown people from their work- | 
shops and their fields, on purpose to be happy. For, 
to-day, a new man is beginning to rule over them; and | 
so—as has been the custom of mankind ever since a_ 
nation was first gathered—they make merry and re- 
joice; as if a good and golden year were at length to 
pass over the poor old world!” 

It was as Hester said, in regard to the unwonted 
jollity that brightened the faces of the people. Into 
this festal season of the year—as it already was, and 
continued to be during the greater part of two cen- 
turies—the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and 
public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; 
thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for 
the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely 
more grave than most other communities at a period 
of general affliction. | 

But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, 
which undoubtedly characterized the mood and man- | 





THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 265 


ners of the age. The persons now in the market-place 
of Boston had not been born to an inheritance of Pu- 
ritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen, whose 
fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Eliza- 
bethan epoch; a time when the life of England, viewed 
as one great mass, would appear to have been as stately, 
magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever wit- 
nessed. Had they followed their hereditary taste, the 
New England settlers would have illustrated all events 
of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageant- 
ries and processions. Nor would it have been im- 
practicable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, 
to combine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and 
give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery 
to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such fes- 
tivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an at- 
tempt of this kind in the mode of celebrating the day 
on which the political year of the colony commenced. 
The dim reflection of a remembered splendor, a col- 
orless and manifold diluted repetition of what they 
had beheld in proud old London,—we will not say at 
a royal coronation, but at a Lord Mayor’s show,— 
might be traced in the customs which our forefathers 
instituted, with reference to the annual installation of 
magistrates. The fathers and founders of the com- 
monwealth—the statesman, the priest, and the soldier 
—deemed it a duty then to assume the outward state 
and majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, 
was looked upon as the proper garb of public or social 
eminence. All came forth, to move in procession be- 
fore the people’s “eye, and thus impart a needed dignity 
to the simple framework of a government so newly 
constructed. , 


——_ 


266 LILO O Als El od ee I 


Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not en- 
couraged, in relaxing the severe and close application 
to their various modes of rugged industry, which, at 
all other times, seemed of the same piece and material 
with their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the 
appliances which popular merriment would so readily 
have found in the England of Elizabeth’s time, or 
that of James; no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no 
minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor glee- 
man, with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, 
with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry An- 
drew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps hun- 
dreds of years old, but still effective, by their appeals 
to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. 
All such professors of the several branches of jocular- 
ity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the 
rigid discipline of law, but by the general sentiment 
which gives law its vitality. Not the less, however, 
the great, honest face of the people smiled, grimly, 
perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, 
such as the colonists had witnessed, and shared in, 
long ago, at the country fairs and on the village-greens 
of England; and which it was thought well to keep 
alive on this new soil, for the sake of the courage and 
manliness that were essential in them. Wrestling- 
matches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and 
Devonshire, were seen here and there about the mar- 
ket-place; in one corner there was a friendly bout at 
quarterstaff ; and—what attracted most interest of all 
—on the platform of the pillory, already so noted in 
Dur pages, two masters of defence were commencing 
an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But, 
much to the disappointment of the crowd, this latter 


PIE NEVO NGLAND HOLIDAY... (267 


business was broken off by the interposition of the 
town beadle, who had no idea of permitting the maj- 
esty of the law to be violated by such an abuse of one 
of its consecrated places. 

It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole (the 
people being then in the first stages of joyless deport- 
ment, and the offspring of sires who had known how 
to be merry, in their day), that they would compare 
favorably, in point of holiday keeping, with their de- 
scendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. 
Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the 
early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritan- 
ism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that 
all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it 
up. We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of 
gayety. 

The picture of human life in the market-place, 
though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or 
black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by 
some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in their 
savage finery of curiously embroidered deer-skin robes, 
wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, 
and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed 
spear—stood apart, with countenances of inflexible 
gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could 
attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, 
were they the wildest feature of the scene. This dis- 
tinction could more justly be claimed by some mari- 
ners,—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Span- 
ish Main,—who had come ashore to see the humors of 
Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, 
with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; 
their wide, short trousers were confined about the waist 


~~) 


268 DA BV CARI Tit Fal ian 


by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and 
sustaining always a long knife, and, in some instances, 
a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of 
palm-leaf gleamed* eyes which, even in good-nature 
and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They 
transgressed, without fear or scruple, the rules of be- 
havior that were binding on all others; smoking to- 
bacco under the beadle’s very nose, although each whiff 
would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing, 
at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vite from 
pocket-flasks, which they freely tendered to the gap- 
ing crowd around them. It remarkably characterized 
the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call 
it, that a license was allowed the seafaring class, not 
merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more 
desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor 
of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate 
in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, 
that this very ship’s crew, though no unfavorable 
specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, 
as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish 
commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks | 
in a modern court of justice. 

But the sea, in those old times, heaved, swelled, and 
foamed, very much at its own will, or subject only to 
the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at 
regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave 
might relinquish his calling, and become at once, if he 
chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even 
in, the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded 
as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traf- 
fic, or casually associate. Thus, the Puritan elders, in 
their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned 


THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY  26q 


hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamor and rude 
deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it ex- 
cited neither surprise nor animadversion when so rep- 
utable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the phy- 
sicilan, was seen to enter the market-place, in close and 
familiar talk with the commander of the questionable 
vessel. 

The latter was by far the most showy and gallant 
figure, so far as apparel went, anywhere to be seen 
among the multitude. He wore a profusion of rib- 
bons on his garment, and gold-lace on his hat, which 
was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted 
with a feather. There was a sword at his side, and a 
sword-cut on his forehead, which, by the arrangement 
of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than 
hide. A landsman could hardly have worn this garb 
and shown this face, and worn and shown them both 
with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern 
question before a magistrate, and probably incurring 
fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the 
stocks. As regarded the shipmaster, however, all was 
looked upon as pertaining to the character, as to a 
fish his glistening scales. 

After parting from the physician, the commander 
of the Bristol ship strolled idly through the market- 
place ; until happening to approach the spot where Hes- 
ter Prynne was standing, he appeared to recognize, 
and did not hesitate to address her. As was usually 
the case wherever Hester stood, a small vacant area— 
a sort of magic circle—had formed itself about her, 
into which, though the people were elbowing one an- 
other at a little distance, none ventured, or felt dis- 
posed, to intrude. It was a forcible type of the moral 


270 Fi ES Orie EV Ee ree 


solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its fated 
wearer; partly by her own reserve, and partly by the 
instinctive, though no longer so unkindly, withdrawal 
of her fellow-creattires. Now, if never before, it an- 
swered a good purpose, by enabling Hester and the 
seaman to speak together without risk of being over- 
heard; and so changed was Hester Prynne’s repute 
before the public, that the matron in town most emi- 
nent for rigid morality could not have held such inter- 
course with less result of scandal than herself. 

“So, mistréss,’’ said the mariner, “I must bid the 
steward make ready one more berth than you bar- 
gained for! No fear of scurvy or ship-fever this voy- 
age! What with the ship’s surgeon and this other 
doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; 
more by token, as there is a lot of apothecary’s stuff 
aboard, which I traded for with a Spanish vessel.” 

“What mean you?” inquired Hester, startled more 
than she permitted to appear. “Have you another 
passenger?” 

“Why, know you not,” cried the shipmaster, ‘‘that 
this physician here—Chillingworth, he calls himself— 
is minded to try my cabin-fare with you? Ay, ay, 
you must have known it; for he tells me he is of your 
party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke 
of,—he that is in peril from these sour old Puritan 
rulers !”’ 

“They know each other well, indeed,” replied Hes- 
ter, with a mien of calmness, though in the utmost 
tonsternation. “They have long dwelt <ogether.” 

Nothing further passed between the mariner and 
Hester Prynne. But, at that instant, she beheld old 
Roger Chillingworth himself, standing in the remotest 


PA EINEWIENGEANDOHOLIDAY  ~ 27% 


corner of the market-place, and smiling on her; a smile 
which—across the wide and bustling square, and 
through all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts, 
moods, and interests of the crowd—conveyed secret 
and fearful meaning, 


XXII 
THE PROCESSION 


Berore Hester Prynne could call together her 
thoughts, and consider what was practicable to be done 
in this new and startling aspect of affairs, the sound of 
military music was heard approaching along a con- 
tiguous street. It denoted the advance of the proces- 
sion of magistrates and citizens, on its way towards 
the meeting-house; where, in compliance with a custom 
thus early established, and ever since observed, the 
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale was to deliver an Election 
Sermon. : 

Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with 
a slow and stately march, turning a corner and making 
its way across the market-place. First came the music. 
It comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps imper- 
fectly adapted to one another, and played with no great 
skill; but yet attaining the great object for which the 
harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to the 
multitude,—that of imparting a higher and more 
heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the 
eye. Little Pearl at first clapped her hands, but then 
lost, for an instant, the restless agitation that had kept 
her in a continual effervescence throughout the morn- 
ing; she gazed silently and seemed to be borne upward, 
like a floating sea-bird, on the long heaves and swells 
of sound. But she was brought back to her former 


mood by the shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons 
272 


% 


_ THE PROCESSION 273 


and bright armor of the military company, which fol- 
lowed after the music, and formed the honorary escort 
of the procession. This body of soldiery—which still 
sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from 
past ages with an ancient and honorable fame—was 
composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were 
filled with gentlemen, who felt the stirrings of martial 
impulse, and sought to establish a kind of College of 
Arms, where as in an association of Knights Templars, 
they might learn the science, and, so far as peaceful 
exercise would teach them, the practices of war. The 
high estimation then placed upon the military character 
might be seen in the lofty port of each individual mem- 
ber of the company. Some of them, indeed, by their 
services in the Low Countries and on other fields of 
warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the name 
and pomp of soldiership. The entire array, moreover, 
clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over 
their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which 
no modern display can aspire to equal. 

And yet the men of civil eminence, who came imme- 
diately behind the military escort, were better worth a 
thoughtful observer’s eye. Even in outward demeanor, 
they showed a stamp of majesty that made the war- 
rior’s haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. It 
was an age when what we call talent had far less con- 
sideration than now, but the massive materiais which , 
produce stability and dignity of character a yvreat deal 
more. , The people possessed, by hereditary right, the 
quality of reverence; which, in their descendants, if it 
survive at all, exists in smaller proportion, and with a 
vastly diminished force, in the selection and estimate 
of public men. The change may be for good or ill, 


274 TABS CARI Terie ie 


and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day, the 
English settler on these rude shores, having left king, 
nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while 
still the faculty and necessity of reverence were strong 
in him, bestowed it on the white hair and venerable 
brow of age; on long-tried integrity; on solid wisdom 
and sad-colored experience; on endowments of that 
erave and weighty order which gives the idea of per- 
manence, and comes under the general definition of re- 
spectability. These primitive statesmen, therefore,— 
Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their 
compeers,—who were elevated to power by the early 
choice of the people, seem to have been not often bril- 
liant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather 
than activity of intellect. They had fortitude and self- 
reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril, stood up for 
the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tem- 
pestuous tide. The traits of character here indicated 
were well represented in the square cast of countenance 
and iarge physical development of the new colonial 
magistrates. So far as a demeanor of natural author- 
ity was concerned, the mother country need not have 
been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual 
democracy adopted into the House of Peers, or made 
the Privy Council of the sovereign. 

Next in order to the magistrates came the young 
and eminently distinguished divine, from whose lips 
the religious discourse of the anniversary was expected. 
His was the profession, at that era, in which intellectual 
ability displayed itself far more than in political life; 
for—leaving a higher motive out of the question—it 
ffered inducements powerful enough, in the almost 
worshipping respect of the community, to win the 








THE PROCESSION 275 


most aspiring ambition into its service. Even political 
power—as in the case of Increase Mather—was withir, 
the grasp of a successful priest. 

It was the observation of those who beheld him now 
that never, since Mr. Dimmesdale first set his foot on 
the New England shore, had he exhibited such energy 
as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his 
pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of 
step, as at other times; his frame was not bent; nor did 
his hand rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the 
clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed 
not of the body. It might be spiritual, and imparted 
to him by angelic ministrations. It might be the ex- 
hilaration of that potent cordial which is distilled only 
in the furnace glow of earnest and long-continued 
thought. Or, perchance, his sensitive temperament was 
invigorated by the loud and piercing music, that swelled 
heavenward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave 
Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be 
questioned whether Mr. Dimmesdale even heard the 
music. There was his body, moving onward, and with 
| an unaccustomed force. But where was his mind? Far 
_ and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preter- 
_ natural activity, to marshal a procession of stately 
_ thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw 
nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing, of what was 
_ around him; but the spiritual elemert took up the 
| feeble frame, and carried it along, unconscious of the 
_ burden, and converting it to spirit like itself. Men of 
uncommon intellect, who have grown morbid, possess 
this occasional power of. mighty effort, into which they 
throw the life of many davs. and then are lifeless for 
as many more. 


276 LESAGE LA ers . 


Hester Prynne, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, 
felt a dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or 
whence she knew not; unless that he seemed so remote 
from her own sphere, and utterly beyond her reach. 
One glance of recognition, she had imagined, must 
needs pass between them. She thought of the dim 
forest, with its little dell of solitude, and love, and 
anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand 
in hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk 
with the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply 
had they known each other then! And was this the 
man? She hardly knew him now! He, moving proudly 
past, enveloped, as it were, in the rich music, with the 
procession of majestic and venerable fathers; he, so un- 
attainable in his worldly position, and still more so in 
that far vista of his unsympathizing thoughts, through 
which she now beheld him! Her spirit sank with the 
idea that all must have been a delusion, and that, 
vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real 
bond betwixt the clergyman and herself. And thus 
much of woman was there in Hester, that she could 
scarcely forgive him,—least of all now, when the heavy 
footstep of their approaching Fate might be heard, 
nearer, nearer, nearer!—for being able so completely 
to withdraw himself from their mutual world; while 
she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, 
and found him not. 

Pearl either saw and responded to her mother’s feel- 
ings, or herself felt the remoteness and intangibility 
that had fallen around the minister. While the pro- 
cession passed, the child was uneasy, fluttering up and 
down, like a bird on the point of taking flight. When 





THE PROCESSION 27% 


the whole had gone by, she looked up into Hester’s 
face. 

“Mother,” said she, “was that the same minister that 
kissed me by the brook?” 

“Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!’ whispered her 
mother. “We must not always talk in the market-place 
of what happens to us in the forest.” 

“T could not be sure that it was he; so strange he 
looked,” continued the child. “Else I would have run 
to him, and bid him kiss me now, before all the people; 
even as he did yonder among the dark old trees. What 
would the minister have said, mother? Would he have 
clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me, 
and bid me be gone?” 

“What should he say, Pearl,’ answered Hester, 
“save that it was no time to kiss, and that kisses are 
not to be given in the market-place? Well for thee, 
foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him!’ 

Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference 
to Mr. Dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose 
eccentricities—or insanity, as we should term it—led 
her to do what few of the townspeople would have 
ventured on; to begin a conversation with the wearer 
of the scarlet letter, in public. It was Mistress Hib- 
bins, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a triple 
ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and 
a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the proces- 
sion. As this ancient lady had the renown (which sub- 
sequently cost her no less. a price than her life) of being 
a principal actor in all the works of necromancy that 
were continually going forward, the crowd gave way 
before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her gar- 
ment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous 


278 PELE SG ATE Bal tis Teds heals 


folds. Seen in conjunction with Hester Prynne,— 
kindly as so many now felt towards the latter,—the 
dread inspired by Mistress Hibbins was doubled, and 
caused a general movement from that part of the mar- 
ket-place in which the two women stood. 

‘“‘Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it!’ 
whispered the old ladv, confidentially to Hester. “Yon-' 
der divine man! That saint on earth, as the people 
uphold him to be, and as—I must needs say—he really 
looks! Who, now, that saw him pass in the proces- 
sion, would think how little while it is since he went 
forth out of his study,—chewing a Hebrew text of 
Scripture in his mouth, I warrant,—to take an airing 
in the forest! Aha! we know what that means, Hester 
Prynne! But, truly, forsooth, I find it hard to believe 
hum the same man. Many a church-member saw I, 
walking behind the music, that has danced in the same 
measure with me, when Somebody was fiddler, and, it 
might be, an Indian powwow or a Lapland wizard 
changing hands with us! That is but a trifle, when a 
woman knows the world. But this minister! Couldst 
thou surely tell, Hester, whether he was the same man 
that encountered thee on the forest-path ?” 

“Madam, I know not of what you speak,’ answered 
Hester Prynne, feeling Mistress Hibbins to be of in- 
firm mind; yet strangely startled and awe-stricken by 
the confidence with which she affirmed a personal con- 
nection between so many persons (herself among them) 
and the Evil One. “It is not for me to talk lightly of 
a learned and pious minister of the Word, like the 
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale!”’ 

“Fie, woman, fie!’ cried the old lady, shaking her 
finger at Hester. “Dost thou think I have been to the 








THE PROCESSION Manel rs 


forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge 
who else has been there? Yea; though no leaf of the 
wild garlands, which they wore while they danced be 
left in their hair! I know thee, Hester; for I behold 
the token. We may all see it in the sunshine; and it 
glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it 
openly; so there need be no question about that. But 
this minister! Let me tell thee, in thine ear! When 
the Black Man sees one of his own servants, signed and 
sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is the Rev- 
erend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering mat- 
ters so that the mark shall be disclosed in open day- 
light to the eves of all the world! What is it that the 
minister seeks to hide, with his hand always over his 
-heart? Ha, Hester Prynne!” 

“What is it, good Mistress Hibbins?” eagerly asked 
littiesPearl.) East thou seen it 2’ 

“No matter, darling!’ responded Mistress Hibbins, 
making Pearl a profound reverence. ‘Thou thyself 
wilt see it, one time or another. They say, child, thou 
art of the lineage of the Prince of the Air! Wilt thou 
ride with me, some fine night, to see thy father? Then 
thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand 
over his heart!’ 

Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could 
hear her, the weird old gentlewoman took her depar- 
ture. 

By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered 
in the meeting-house, and the accents of the Reverend 
Mr. Dimmesdale were heard commencing his dis- 
course. An irresistible feeling kept Hester near the 
spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to 
admit another auditor, she took up her position close 


280 THE SCARLE Ek LEDGER 


beside the scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient 
proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the 
shape of an indistinct, but varied, murmur and flow of 
the minister’s very peculiar voice. | 

This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment; 
insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of the 
language in which the preacher spoke, might still have 
Seen swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. 
Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, 
and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the 
human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound 
was by its passage through the church-waills, Hester 
Prynne listened with such intentness, and sympathized 
so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a mean- 
ing for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable 
words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might 
have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged 
the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low undertone, 
as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then 
ascended with it, as it rose through progressive grada- 
tions of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed 
to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn 
srandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes 
became, there was forever in it an essential character 
of plaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguish, 
—the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be conceived, 
of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in 
every bosom! At times this deep strain of pathos was 
all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid 
a desolate silence. But even when the minister’s voice 
grew high and commanding,—when it gushed irre- 
pressibly upward,—when it assumed its utmost breadth 
and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way 


DT ICO O25 S51 ON 281 


through the solid walls and diffuse itself in the open 
air,—still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the 
purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What 
was it? The complaint of a human heart, sorrow- 
laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of 
gmlt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; be- 
seeching its sympathy or forgiveness,—at every mo- 
ment,—in each accent,—and never in vain! It was 
this profound and continual undertone that gave the 
_ clergyman his most appropriate power. 

During all this time, Hester stood, statue-like, at the 
foot of the scaffold. If the minister’s voice had not 
kept her there, there would nevertheless have been an 
inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated 
the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a 
sense within her,—too ill-defined to be made a thought, 
but weighing heavily on her mind,—that her whole 
orb of life, both before and after, was connected with 
this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity. 

Little Pearl, meanwhile, had quitted her mother’s 
side, and was playing at her own will about the market- 
place. She made the sombre crowd cheerful by her 
erratic and glistening ray; even as a bird of bright 
plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage by 
darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid 
the twilight of the clustering leaves. She had an un- 
dulating, but, oftentimes, a sharp and irregular move- 
ment. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, 
which to-day was doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe 
dance, because it was played upon and vibrated with 
her mother’s disquietude. Whenever Pearl saw any- 
thing to excite her ever-active and wandering curiosity, 
she flew thitherward, and, as we might say, seized upon 


282 THE SCARLE PILE RPE Tc 


that man or thing as her own property, so far as she 
desired it; but without yielding the minutest degree 
of control over her motions in requital. The Puritans 
looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less in- 
clined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from 
the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity 
that shone through her little figure, and sparkled with 
its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in 


the face; and he grew conscious of a nature wilder 


than his own. Thence, with native audacity, but still 
with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst 
of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men 
of the ocean, as the Indians were of the land; and 
they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Pearl, as 
if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a 
little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, 
that flashes beneath the prow in the night-time. 

One of these seafaring men—the shipmaster, in- 
deed, who had spoken to Hester Prynne—was so 
smitten with Pearl’s aspect, that he attempted to lay 
hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Find- 
ing it as impossible to touch her as to catch a hum- 
ming-bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold 
chain that was twisted about it, and threw it to the 
child. Pearl immediately twined it around her neck 
and waist, with such happy skill, that, once seen there, 
it became a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine 
her without it. 

“Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet let- 
ter,’ said the seaman. ‘Wilt thou carry her a mes- 
sage from me?” 

“Tf the message pleases me, I will,” answered Pearl. 

“Then tell her,’ rejoined he, “that I spake again 


Se eee eee 


a 


THE PROCESSION 283 


with the black-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, 
and he engages to bring his friend, the gentleman she 
wots of, aboard with him. So let thy mother take no 
thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt thou tell her 
this, thou witch-baby?” | 

“Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of 
the Air!” cried Pearl, with a naughty smile. ‘“If thou 
callest me that ill name, I shall tell him of thee, and 
he will chase thy ship with a tempest!” 

Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, 
the child returned to her mother, and communicated 
what the mariner had said. MHester’s strong, calm, 
steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on be- 
holding this dark and grim countenance of an inevi- 
table doom, which—at the moment when a passage 
seemed to open for the minister and herself out of 
their labyrinth of misery—showed itself, with an un- 
relenting smile, right in the midst of their path. 

With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity 
in which the shipmaster’s intelligence involved her, she 
was also subjected to another trial. There were many 
people present, from the country round about, who had 
often heard of the scarlet letter, and to whom it had 
been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated 
rumors, but who had never beheld it with their owr 
bodily eyes. These, after exhausting other modes of 
amusement, now thronged about Hester Prynne with 
rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it 
was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a 
circuit of several yards. At that distance they accord- 
ingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the 
repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The 
whole gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press 


284 LET TED SOTA RST Te te TO 


of spectators, and learning the purport of the scarlet 
letter, came and thrust their sunburnt and desperado- 
looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians were af- 
fected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man’s 
curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened 
their snake-like black eyes on Hester’s bosom; conceiv- 
ing, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly em- 
pbroidered badge must needs be a personage of high 
dignity among her people. Lastly, the inhabitants of 
the town (their own interest in this worn-out subject 
languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they 
saw others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and 
tormented Hester Prynne, perhaps more than all the 
rest, with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her fa- 
miliar shame. Hester saw and recognized the self- 
same faces of that group of matrons, who had awaited 
her forthcoming from the prison-door, seven years 
ago; all save one, the youngest and only compassionate 
among them, whose burial-robe she had since made. 
At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside 
the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre _ 
of more remark and excitement, and was thus made 
to sear her breast more painfully than at any time 
since the first day she put it on. 

While Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy, 
where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to 
have fixed her forever, the admirable preacher was 
looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience 
whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. 
The sainted minister in the church! The woman of 
the scarlet letter in the market-place! What imagi- 
nation would have been irreverent enough to surmise 
that the same scorching stigma was on them both! 


XXITI 
THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER 


THE eloquent voice, on which the souls of the lis- 
tening audience had been borne aloft as on the swelling 
waves of the sea, at length came to a pause. There 
was a momentary silence, profound as what should 
follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a mur- 
mur and half-hushed tumult; as if the auditors, re- 
leased from the high spell that had transported them 
into the region of another’s mind, were returning into 
themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy 
on them. In a moment more, the crowd began to 
gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that 
there was an end, they needed other breath, more fit 
to support the gross and earthly life into which they 
relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher had 
converted into words of flame, and had burdened with 
the rich fragrance of his thought. 

In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The 
street and the market-place absolutely babbled, from 
side to side, with applauses of the minister. His 
hearers could not rest until they had told one another 
of what each knew better than he could tell or hear. 
According to their united testimony, never had man 
spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he 
that spake this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed 


through mortal lips more evidently than it did through 
285 


286 DEES OCU Eh Tenn Geen 


his. Its influence could be seen, as it were, descend- 
ing upon him, and possessing him, and continually 
lifting him out of the written discourse that lay be- 
fore him, and filling him with ideas that must have 
been as marvellous to himself as to his audience. His 
subject, it appeared, had been the relation between the 
Deity and the communities of mankind, with a special 
reference to the New England which they were here 
planting in the wilderness. And, as he drew towards 
the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, 
constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old 
prophets of Israel were constrained; only with this dif- 
ference, that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced 
judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mis- 
sion to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the 
newly gathered people of the Lord. But, throughout 
it all, and through the whole discourse, there had been 
a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could 
not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural re- 
eret of one soon to pass away. Yes; their minister 
whom they so loved—and who so loved them all, that 
he could not depart heavenward without a sigh—had 
the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would 
soon leave them in their tears! This idea of his tran- 
sitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the ef- 
fect which the preacher had produced; it was as if 
an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his 
bright wings over the people for an instant,—at once 
a shadow and a splendor,—and had shed down a 
shower of golden truths upon them. 

Thus, there had come to the Reverend Mr. Dim- 
mesdale—as to most men, in their various spheres, 
though seldom recognized until they see it far behind 


| 
| 
: 
| 
| 





Y 


THE REVELATION 287 


them—an epoch of life more brilliant and full of tri- 
umph than any previous one, or than any which could 
hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very 
proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts 
of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a repu- 
tation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in 
New England’s earliest days, when the professional 
character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was 
the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed 
his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at the 
close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Hester 
Prynne was standing beside the scaffold of the pillory, 
with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast! : 

Now was heard again the clangor of music, and the 
measured tramp of the military escort, issuing from 
the church-door. The procession was to be marshalled 
thence to the town-hall, where a solemn banquet would 
complete the ceremonies of the day. 

Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and 
majestic fathers was seen moving through a broad 
pathway of the people, who drew back reverently, on 
either side, as the Governor and magistrates, the old 
and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were 
eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of 
them. When they were fairly in the market-place, 
their presence was greeted by a shout. This—though 
doubtless it might acquire additional force and vol- 
ume from the childlike loyalty which the age awarded 
to its rulers—was felt to be an irrepressible outburst 
of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by that high 
strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in 
their ears. Each felt the impulse in himself, and, m 


288 TAES CARE ery ke 


the same breath, caught it from his neighbor. Within 
the church, it had hardly been kept down; beneath 
the sky, it pealed upward to the zenith. There were 
human beings enotigh, and enough of highly wrought 
and symphonious feeling, to produce that more im- 
pressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, or 
the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that mighty 
swell of many voices, blended into one great voice by 
the universal impulse which makes likewise one vast 
heart out of the many. Never, from the soil of New 
England, had gone up such a shout! Never, on New 
England soil, had stood the man honored by his mor- 
tal brethren as the preacher. 

How fared it with him then? Were there not the 
brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head? 
So etherealized by spirit as he was, and so apotheosized 
by worshipping admirers, did his footsteps, in the 
procession, really tread upon the dust of earth? 

As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved 
onward, all eyes were turned towards the point where 
the minister was seen to approach among them. The 
shout died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd 
after another obtained a glimpse of him. How feeble 
and pale he looked, amid all his triumph! The energy 
—or say, rather, the inspiration which had held him 
up until he should have delivered the sacred message 
that brought its own strength along with it from 
Heaven—was withdrawn, now that it had so faithfully 
performed its office. The glow, which they had just 
before beheld burning on his cheek, was extinguished, 
like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the 
late-decaying embers. It seemed hardly the face of a 
man alive, with such a deathlike hue; it was hardly a 


HAE BPE AGLON 289 


man with life in him that tottered on his path so nerve- 
lessly, yet tottered, and did not fall! 

One of his clerical brethren,—it was the venerable 
John Wilson,—observing the state in which Mr. Dim- 
mesdale was left by the retiring wave of intellect and 
sensibility, stepped forward hastily to offer his sup- 
port. The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled 
the old man’s arm. He still walked onward, if that 
movement could be so described, which rather resem- 
bled the wavering effort of an infant with its mother’s 
arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. 
And now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps 
of his progress, he had come opposite the well-remem- 
bered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since, 
with all that dreary lapse of time between, Hester 
Prynne had encountered the world’s ignominious stare. 
There stood Hester, holding little Pearl by the hand! 
And there was the scarlet letter on her breast! The 
minister here made a pause, although the music still 
played the stately and rejoicing march to which the 
procession moved. It summoned him onward,-—on- 
ward to the festival!—but here he made a pause. 

Bellingham, for the last few moments, had kept an 
anxious eye upon him. He now left his own place in 
the procession, and advanced to give assistance, judg- 
ing, from Mr. Dimmesdale’s aspect, that he must other- 
wise inevitably fall. But there was something in the 
latter’s expression that warned back the magistrate, 
although a man not readily obeying the vague intima- 
tions that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd, 
meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. This 
earthly faintness was, in their view, only another phase 
of the minister’s celestial strength; nor would it have 


290 THE SCARLET LETTER 


seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for one so 
holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer 
and brighter, and fading at last into the light of 
heaven. 

He turned ey the scaffold, and stretched forth 
his arms. 

“Hester,” said he, “come hither! Come, my little 
Pearl!” 

It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; 
but there was something at once tender and strangely 
triumphant in it. The child, with the bird-like motion 
which was one of her characteristics, flew to him, and 
clasped her arms about his knees. Hester Prynne— 
slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against 
her strongest will—likewise drew near, but paused 
before she reached him. At this instant, old Roger 
Chillingworth thrust himself through the crowd,—or, 
perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil, was his look, he 
rose up out of some nether region,—to snatch back 
his victim from what he sought to do! Be that as it 
might, the old man rushed forward, and caught the 
minister by the arm. 

“Madman, hold! what is your purpose?” whispered 
he. ‘‘Wave back that woman! Cast off this child! 
All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and 
perish in dishonor! I can yet save you! Would you 
bring infamy on your sacred profession?” | 

“Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late!” an- 
swered the minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, 
but firmly. “Thy power is not what it was! With 
God’s help, I shall escape thee now!” 

He again extended his hand to the woman of the 
scarlet letter. 





THE REVELATION 291 


b) 


“Hester Prynne,” cried he, with a piercing earnest- 
ness, “in the name of Him, so terrible and so merci- 
ful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do 
what—for my own heavy sin and miserable agony— 
I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come 
hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy 
strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which 
God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged 
old man is opposing it with all his might! with all his 
own might, and the fiend’s! Come, Hester, come! 
Support me up yonder scaffold!” 

The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and 
dignity, who stood more immediately around the 
clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and so per- 
plexed as to the purport of what they saw,—unable 
to receive the explanation which most readily pre- 
sented itself, or to imagine any other,-—that they re- 
mained silent and inactive spectators of the judgment 
which Providence seemed about to work. They be. 
held the minister, leaning on Hester’s shoulder, and 
supported by her arm around him, approach the scaf- 
fold, and ascend its steps; while still the little hand 
of the sin-born child was clasped in his. Old Roger 
Chillingworth followed, as one intimately connected 
with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had 
all been actors, and well entitled, therefore, to be pres 
ent at its closing scene. 

“Hadst thou sought the whole earth over,” said he, 
looking darkly at the clergyman, “there was no one 
place so secret,—no high place nor lowly place, where 
thou couldst have escaped me,—save on this very 
scaffold !’’ 


292 THEY SCGARL E TAL Bi Gi he 


“Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither!’ an- 
swered the minister. 
Yet he trembled, and turned to Hester with an ex- 


pression of doubt’and anxiety in his eyes, not the less 


evidently betrayed, that there was a feeble smile upon 
his lips. 

“Ts not this better,’ murmured he, “than what we 
dreamed of in the forest?’ 

“I know not! I know not!” she hurriedly replied. 
“Better? Yea; so we-may both die, and little Pearl 
die with us!’ 

“For thee and Pearl, be it as God shall order,” said 
the minister; “and God is merciful! Let me now do 
the will which He hath made plain before my sight. 
For, Hester, 1am a dying man. So let me make haste 
to take my shame upon me!” 

Partly supported by Hester Prynne, and holding 
one hand of little Pearl’s, the Reverend Mr. Dimmes- 
dale turned to the dignified and venerable rulers; to 
the holy ministers, who were his brethren; to the peo- 
ple, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled, yet 
overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that 
some deep life-matter-—which, if full of sin, was full 
of anguish and repentance likewise—was now to be 
laid open to them. The sun, but little past its me- 
ridian, shone down upon the clergyman, and gave a 
distinctness to his figure, as he stood out from all the 
earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eternal 
Justice. 

“People of New England!” cried he, with a voice 
that rose over them, high, solemn, and majestic,— 
yet had always a tremor through it, and sometimes a 
shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of re- 





AA EORBVELATION 293 


morse and woe,—“ye, that have loved me!—ye, that 
have deemed me holy !—behold me here, the one sinner 
of the world! At last!—at last!—I stand upon the 
spot where, seven years since, I should have stood; 
here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the 
little strength wherewith I have crept hitherward, sus- 
tains me, at this dreadful moment, from grovelling 
down upon my face Lo, the scarlet letter which 
Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever 
her walk hath been,—wherever, so miserably bur- 
dened, she may have hoped to find repose,—it hath 
cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance 
round about her. But there stood one in the midst 
of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not 
shuddered !’’ i 

It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must 
leave the remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he 
fought back the bodily weakness,—and, still more, the 
faintness of heart,—that was striving for the mastery 
with him. He threw off all assistance, and stepped 
passionately forward a pace before the woman and the 
child. 

“Tt was on him!” he continued, with a kind of flerce- 
ness,—so determined was he to speak out the whole. 
“God’s eye beheld it! The angels were forever point- 
ing at it! The Devil knew it well, and fretted it con- - 
tinually with the touch of his burning finger! But he 
hid it cunningly trom men, and walked among you 
with the mien of a spirit, mournful, because so pure 
in a sinful world!—and sad, because he missed his 
heavenly kindred! Now, at the death-hour, he stands 
up before you! He bids you look again at Hester’s 
scarlet letter! He tells you, that, with all its mysteri- 


204 THES OAR ETM EES cir 


ous horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on his 
own breast, and that even this, his own red stigma, is no 
more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart! 
Stand any here that question God’s judgment on a 
sinner? Behold! Behold a dreadful witness of it!” 

With a convulsive motion, he tore away the minis- 
terial band from before his breast. It was revealed! 
But it were irreverent to describe that revelation. For 
an instant, the gaze of the horror-stricken multitude 
was concentred on the ghastly miracle; while the min- 
ister stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one 
who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. 
Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Hester partly 
raised him, and supported his head against her bosom. 
Old Roger Chillingworth knelt down beside him, with 
a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed 
to have departed. 

“Thou hast escaped me!’ he repeated more than 
once. “Thou hast escaped me!’’ 

“May God forgive thee!’ said the minister. “Thou, 
too, hast deeply sinned!” 

He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and 
fixed them on the woman and the child. 

“My little Pearl,’ said he, feebly,—and there was 
a sweet and gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit 
sinking into deep repose; nay, now that the burden 
was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be spor- 
tive with the child,—‘“dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss 
me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! 
But now thou wilt?” 

Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The 
great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a 
part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears 





DHEVREV ELA TION 295 


fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that 
she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor 
forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in 
it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl’s errand as a mes: 
senger of anguish was all fulfilled. 

“Hester,” said the clergyman, “farewell!” 

“Shall we not meet again?” whispered she, bending 
her face down close to his. ‘Shall we not spend our 
immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ran- 
somed one another, with all this woe! Thou lookest 
far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! Then 
tell me what thou seest?”’ 

“Hush, Hester, hush!” said he, with tremulous 
solemnity. “The law we broke!—the sin here so aw- 
fully revealed!—let these alone be in thy thoughts! 
I fear! I fear! It may be that, when we forgot our 
God,—when we violated our reverence each for the 
other’s soul,—it was thenceforth vain to hope that we 
could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure re- 
union. God knows; and He is merciful! He hath 
proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By 
giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast! 
By sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep 
the torture always at red-heat! By bringing me hither, 
to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the 
people! Had either of these agonies been wanting, I 
had been lost forever! Praised be his name! His 
will be done! Farewell!’ 

That final word came forth with the minister’s ex- 
piring breath. The multitude, silent till then, broke 
out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which 
could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmutuy 
that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit. 


XXIV 
CONCLUSION 


AFTER many days, when time sufficed for the peo 
ple to arrange their thoughts in reference to the fore- 
going scene, there was more than one account of what 
had been witnessed on the scaffold. 

Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on 
the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER 
—the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne 
imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin, there 
were various explanations, all of which must neces- 
sarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the 
Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hes- — 
ter Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had be- 
gun a course of penance,—which he afterwards, in 
so many futile methods, followed out,—by inflicting 
a hideous torture on himself. Others contended that 
the stigma had not been produced until a long time 
subsequent, when old Roger Chillingworth, being a 
potent necromancer, had caused it to appear, through 
the agency of magic and poisonous drugs. Others, 
again,—and those best able to appreciate the minis- 
ter’s peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful operation 
of his spirit upon the body,—whispered their belief, 
that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever-active 
tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart 
outwardly, and at last manifesting Heaven’s dreadful 

206 








CONCLUSION 207 


judgment by the visible presence of the letter. The 
reader may choose among these theories. We have 
thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, 
and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase 
its deep print out of our own brain, where long medi- 
tation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness. 

It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who 
were spectators of the whole scene, and professed never 
once to have removed their eyes from the Reverend 
Mr. Dimmesdzale, denied that there was any mark 
whatever on his breast, more than on a new-born in: 
fant’s. Neither, by their report, had his dying words 
acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any, the 
slightest connection, on his part, with the guilt for 
which Hester Prynne had.so long worn the scarlet let- 
ter. According to these highly respectable witnesses, 
the minister, conscious that he was dying,—conscious, 
also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him 
already among saints and angels,—had desired, by 
yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman 
to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the 
choicest of man’s own righteousness. After :exhaust- 
ing life in his efforts for mankind’s spiritual good, he 
had made the manner of his death a parable, in order | 
to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful ' 
lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sin- 
ners all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest 
among us has but attained so far above his fellows as 
to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, 
and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human 
merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without 
disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed 
to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale’s story as 


298 THE SCARLET LETTER 


only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which 
-a man’s friends—and especially a clergyman’s—will 
sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as 
the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish 
him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust. 

The authority which we have chiefly followed,—a 
manuscript of old date, drawn up from the verbal tes- 
timony of individuals, some of whom had known Hes- 
ter Prynne, while others had heard the tale ‘from con- 
temporary witnesses,—fully confirms the view taken 
in the foregoing pages. Among many morals which 
press upon us from the poor minister’s miserable ex- 
perience, we put only this into a sentence: “Be true! 
Be true! Be true!' Show freely to the world, if not 
your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be 
inferred!” 

Nothing was more remarkable than the change which 
took place, almost immediately after Mr. Dimmesdale’s 
death, in the appearance and demeanor of the old man 
known as Roger Chillingworth. All his strength and 
energy—all his vital and intellectual force—seemed at 
once to desert him; insomuch that he positively with- 
ered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from 
mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting 
in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very 
principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and sys- 
tematic exercise of revenge; and when, by its com- 
pletest triumph and consummation, that evil principle 
was left with no further material to support it, when, 
in short, there was no more Devil's work on earth for 
him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mor- 
tal to betake himself whither his Master would find 
him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But 


CONCLUSION 299 


to all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaint. | 
ances,—as well Roger Chillingworth as his compan. 
ions,—we would fain be merciful. It is a curious 
subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and 
love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its 
utmost development, supposes a high degree of inti- 
macy and heart-knowledge; each renders one indi- 
vidual dependent for the food of his affections and 
spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate 
lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and deso- 
late by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically 
considered, therefore, the two passions seem essen- 
tially the same, except that one happens to be seen in 
a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid 
glow. In the spiritual world, the old physician and 
the minister—mutual victims as they have been—may, 
unawares, have found their earthly stock of hatred and 
antipathy transmuted into golden love. 

Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of 
business to communicate to the reader. At old Roger 
Chillingworth’s decease (which took place within the 
year), and by his last will and testament, of which 
Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr. Wilson 
were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable 
amount of property, both here and in England, to lit. 
tle Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne. | 

So Pearl—the elf-child,—the demon offspring, as 
some people, up to that epoch, persisted in considering 
her,—became the richest heiress of her day, in the New 
World. Not improbably, this circumstance wrought 
a very material change in the public estimation; and, 
had the mother and child remained here, little Pearl, 
at a marriageable period of life, might have mingled 


300 TELELE 1S OWL eS Ere Fe 


her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puri- 
tan among them all. But, in no long time after the 
physician’s death, the wearer of the scarlet letter dis- 
appeared, and Pearl-along with her. For many years, 
though a vague report would now and then find its 
wv across the sea,—like a shapeless piece of drift- 
»yood tost ashore, with the initials of a name upon it,— 
yet no tidings of them unquestionably authentic were 
received. The story of the scarlet letter grew into a 
legend. Its spell, however, was still potent, and kept 
the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died, 
and likewise the cottage by the seashore, where Hester 
Prynne had dwelt. Near this latter spot, one after- 
noon, some children were at play, when they beheid a 
tall woman, in a gray robe, approach the cottage-door. 
In all those years it had never once been opened; but 
either she unlocked it, or the decaying wood and iron 
yielded to her hand, or she glided shadowlike through 
these impediments,—and, at all events, went in. 

On the threshold she paused,—turned partly round, 
—for, perchance, the idea of entering all alone, and 
all so changed, the home of so intense a former life, 
was more dreary and desolate than even she could bear. 
But her hesitation was only for an instant, though long 
enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast. 

And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her 
long-forsaken shame! But where was little Pearl? If 
still alive, she must now have been in the flush and 
bloom of early womanhood. None knew—nor ever 
learned, with the fulness of perfect certainty—whether 
the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave, 
or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and | 
subdued, and made capable of a woman’s gentle hap- 


CONCLUSION 301 


piness. But, through the remainder of Hester’s life, 
there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet 
letter was the object of love and interest with some 
inhabitant of another land. Letters came, with armo- 
rial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to 
English heraldry. In the cottage there were articles 
of comfort and luxury such as Hester never cared to 
use, but which only wealth could have purchased, and 
affection have imagined for her. There were trifles, 
too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual 
remembrance, that must have been wrought by deli- 
cate fingers, at the impulse of a fond heart. And, once, 
Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment, with 
such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have 
raised a public tumult, had any infant, thus apparelled, 
been shown to our sober-hued community. 

In fine, the gossips of that day believed,—and Mr 
Surveyor Pue, who made investigations a century later, 
believed,— and one of his recent successors in office, 
moreover, faithfully believes,—that Pearl was not only 
alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her 
mother, and that she would have most joyfully have 
entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside. 

But there was a more real life for Hester’ Prynne 
here, in New England, than in that unknown region 
where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her 
sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her peni- 
tence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed,— 
of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate 
of that iron period would have imposed it,—resumed 
the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. 
Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the 
lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and _ self-devoted 


302 DHE SOAR IE Bap: 


years that made up Hester’s life, the scarlet letter 
ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn 
and bitterness, and became a type of something to be 
sorrowed over, and* looked upon with awe, yet with 
reverence, too. And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish 
ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and 
enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and per- 
plexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had 
herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more 
especially—in the continually recurring trials of 
wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and 
sinful passion,—or with the dreary burden of a heart 
unyielded, because unvalued and unsought,—came to 
Hester’s' cottage, demanding why they were so 
wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted 
and counselled them as best she might. She assured 
them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter 
period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, 
in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be revealed, 
in order to establish the whole relation between man 
and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. 
Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she 
herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long 
since recognized the impossibility that any mission of 
divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a 
woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or 
even burdened with a life-long sorrow. The angel 
and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman 
indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, more- 
over, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium 
of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us 
happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an 
end! 


CONCLUSION 303 


So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes 
downward at the scarlet letter. And, after many, many 
years a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken 
one, in that burial-ground beside which King’s Chapel 
has since been built. It was near that old and sunken 
grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the 
two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tomb- 
stone served for both. All around, there were monu- 
ments carved with armorial bearings; and on this sim- 
ple slab of slate—as the curious investigator may still 
discern, and perplex himself with the purport—there 
appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It 
bore a device, a herald’s wording of which might serve 
for a motto and brief description of our now con- 
cluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by 
one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the 
shadow :— 


“ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, CULES.” 


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